Not Dead But Sleeping: A Gothic Fairytale by General Spielsdorf
by General Spielsdorf
Summary: Han Christian Andersen's The Steadfast Tin Soldier and a vague historical tract from Rosell Hope Robbins combine for a gothic horror tale of mutilation, perversion, lust and revenge... in which love is not dead, but sleeping!


"Not Dead But Sleeping"A Gothic Fairytale based on the Hans Christian Anderson Tale of

_**The** **Steadfast Tin Soldier.**_

Retold by

General Spielsdorf

"This is a love letter to a nightmare…"

_Leonora Carrington_

"This must come off!" spits the surgeon with a twisted grimace and I shriek out a string of blasphemies and rail against him. There is no lame apology for the thing it is that he must do, he has no room for sympathy in his heart and no regret for he does not have to live with the result of his butchery- look in his face, and he's laughing! It is a burning furnace of captivated ecstasies and there is a mad glint in his eyes, I am not deceived, for I know his ghoulish work- he enjoys it, is more than agreeable to serve up suffering and anguish, knowing that he alone commands the powers of life over death. If only I could reach up and curl my fingers about his throat I would strangle him without compunction but there is a weight holding me down, restraining my arms. There is a struggle that seems to take place somewhere other, a fracas in which three men grapple with each other in a squalid, dimly lit room in hell.

"Hold him fast idiot!"

The third man's hideous visage glares at the first and his lips curl back from decaying teeth, I feel his fingers, strong fingers clamping onto my arm and twisting. More pain shoots through me.

The surgeon wipes away a film of sweat and mutters a garbled complaint about the humidity in this stinking room and I want to struggle and yet my limbs seem paralysed, useless. He looks to his assistant, an ugly, stinking entity with a slow-witted eye, and issues a stream of nonsensical instructions that are lost to the thunder of my own blood pounding.

"Shall I bind him doctor?"

The words are ignored.

The orderly, if that is who he is smiles broadly and I can feel the fevered heat of his clutch as it relaxes slightly on my arm. How my skin leaps in disgust, for the touch becomes almost a stroke, a caress, lingering and lascivious. And there is a gleam in his watery eye of perverse knowledge, a wink even, and do his lips open, does his tongue wriggle and salivate? And that dreadful caress travels along the length of my body, kneading my skin and hot like a brand. I hear the splitting rend of fabric as my clothing is torn. Oh God leave me alone you filthy beast, don't touch me!

The surgeon takes up a kohl stick, traces a greasy black line over my skin; the flesh leaps as if awoken by flame, the thrill worse than the abominable sensation of the other's touch. My mind screams as if it knows involuntarily the dreadful terrors to come. This is not right, cruelty for its own sake, and I vow he will pay for this terrible crime.

Says the doctor, "About here..."

I listen to his words as they trail off to become a weird, distorted echo, and I want to spit at him, expose him for the butcher he really is, rally the world to drag him away and string him up. "See- this fiend is a maniac!"

The attending nurse whispers a mute agreement, slurs some witless remark and sets his mouth in a twisted rictus, just as evil in his sadistic heart as the madman doctor.

"Be calm my friend," the ugly one drools, licking a gob of mucus away with a lolling tongue, "and I promise that you won't feel a thing." He chuckles and there is a ghastly suggestion in his words, one of desecration and violence and he looks from my bulging stare to the surgeon, a sick appetence flaming in his eyes. I gaze on helpless and I cannot move, cannot speak. My heart thumps faster than it has ever beaten before, faster than a pounding drum- and surely it must burst in my chest and kill me. Better that than this. No mercy is made manifest and there is to be no kinder deliverance, no salvation.

Says the doctor, "Secure him."

"Didn't I already ask?"

"Just shut up and do it!" snaps the surgeon, reaching out and snatching up something from a near, bloodstained table.

"Oh god," I moan and feel myself on the brink of tears for I am too far-gone to struggle; no fight lives here except inside my brain.

"I want to get finished sometime tonight." The doctor's words slide without compassion over the wicked organ that is his tongue, and I imagine that tongue, thick and white like a worm rolling back down his neck and choking him. How I wished to punish him for uttering that dreadful sentence, take out that tongue or even smash his teeth. There is no eye contact; he does not even look me in my face, in itself an admission of guilt to the crime he must commit.

"_Bastard! Leave me alone; take your filthy hands off me!"_

His fingers are long and flex like a spider's legs; they dip and squeeze an iodine swab that colours my skin a wet and dripping ochre. I strain my head up so as to watch on unbelieving, unable to close my eyes, and I see the knife and the great curved needle swimming in a dish of clouded liquid on a side table; I see the twine that must suture my flesh and a knotted roll of stained bandage.

The maniac nurse grasps my right hand, roughly, as if I was in any condition to resist, ties it around the wrist with a dirty leather strap, binds me to the table upon which they have thrown me. He repeats the action with my left hand, his grim lips stretched to the point where they must crack and split his face in two. Stooping in close he whispers an abominable solicitude in my ear and I scream, my body stiffening and weakly thrashing against its bonds.

"_I will remember your face!" _I vow, sealing that hideous image into my memory and holding it there as the world swims crazily out of kilter. His face dips closer till I can feel the putrid heat of his foul breath on my lips, his own lips brush the screaming vent of my mouth, twitching and grinning and laughing.

"Leave off!" commands the doctor angrily, striking the brute a blow to the head and growling. Inside of me the scream echoes throughout the coil of my guts. I cannot recount for certain any of the words, incoherent words and terrible curses that I shout aloud against this slippery, mad medic and his brain-dead henchman, vile profanities against god and humankind. Deaf to my verbal agonies they force a bottle of brandy into my mouth, choking I manage only feeble, spluttering moans. A glint of cold steel flashes in the guttering light of the torture chamber, the knife drips water like blood and becomes the colour of the sun at dusk.

"No," I can hear my voice shriek. "You can't even see what you're doing!"

But the blade dances in stagnant air and there is to be no swaying this maniac. His gaze drops like a bird of prey upon my exposed flesh.

And then it happens, a dreadful burning pain sears my skin, a river of scarlet fire erupts from my flesh and streaks the face of the orderly. I glimpse a flat silver blade with a wicked row of lethal teeth catching the light, and its broad length throws back their reflections, _my_ reflection- lips stretched wide yet soundless! A gnarled block of wood is thrust between my lips, a splinter upon which my jaws lock and my teeth clamp. And my second scream is a dreadful shriek of agony that even my benumbed brain refuses to believe- choked off by the wood, drowned in the sewer of alcohol welling in my throat. The bench runs crimson; the surgeon's hands pass an arc in the fetid air, seem dipped in red paint.

Says the doctor; "I'm almost through. Is the fire ready? I will need to cauterise quickly." Pinpoints of darkness stab at my vision, and his face blurs out of focus, lacerated by flashing shadows. A part of me is fleeing, taking flight to the night, to the nothing on frantic, terrified wings. I can see a blackened sliver of metal with a red glowing tip smoking in that darkness, it comes closer, closer and here my soul cries out and I visit for a stricken moment among the dead.

Says Captain Leroux of the Gendarme, shaking his head and looking at me as if I were _'mauvais ton'_, "What possessed you to commit such a disgusting crime?"

I stare back and reply with a less brutish remark: "How is love a crime?"

Leroux's blue eyes flash and open just a fraction wider.

"Love!" he exclaims. "Surely you jest!"

The blank expression on my face tells him that I do not.

"Love," I assure Leroux, "is no joke…"

That moment when the stars shatter and the night exiles its shadows, when the flowers and the trees and the very stones under your feet take upon themselves different hues and textures so that you suspect you no longer live in the physical world. It is that moment when your throat runs dry and you cannot speak, your voice frozen for joy, when your heart misses its beat, when your eyes see all through a veil of impenetrable mist; that is the moment of love surely?

Or the moment of madness.

And from that very first moment, beholding Carmanio, I knew love, knew that I could love only her. And no other. Love is not a smile or a kiss; it is not a touch or a sigh, is not composed of gentle words and lingering embraces and chooses not it's time to strike. Its arrows pierce the heart at the moment of its choosing and its fire _is _fierce and it captivates, and this is the real truth of emotion- it sears your brain, enters into your very bloodstream and makes you sick with wanting. Once love finds you it will not let you go, not ever! Love possesses- and you will think of nothing else, love and the flesh combined, the flesh and the agony and the torture of the soul. Love; yes love, though you would most likely call it obsession.

She was as delicate as a lily, the proudest of all flowers, white with gold-tipped petals, whiter than a snowflake, virginal, impossibly pure: a slender stem tall against the pastel blue of a summer sky. I close my eyes and I can see her moving in a perfumed breeze, elegant and yet somehow imbued with strength and will. Her eye commanded when it touched yours and her lips burned red, as red and as potent as any ruby flame can burn. Her skin was luminous, as I have said, like the lily- whitely transparent, like porcelain. And her hair, oh, that weave of spun midnight, so black and so fine I could easily have smothered myself in its tresses. Anything she should ask of me would be done, I would have altered the world for her, twisted it to suit any vainglorious whim, and any desire she might have entertained. That she should desire _me_.

These images alone are what the heart enraptured knows. And how it ached. Carmanio was the loveliest creature to grace God's earth, and I surely unworthy of even a look or a smile from her. The fool in love will think many strange things, valiant and ignoble both, for the elusive object of desire, once found might just as easily be lost. And what would I do if I were to lose that which was not even mine? I dare not even think this ghastly truth lest cruel Fate should intervene and smite me. Yet she was not mine- not mine at all and oh, how I longed to possess her. In my lips she would find a flame to taste the equal of hers, in my hand her flesh would never know cold, in my heart she would always be worshipped. Yet she did not know this. How and by what means could I tell her?

Carmanio was a dancer in the ballet, pirouetting each night in the Theatre des Anges. It was there, visiting in one of my infrequent desiderate night-wanderings that I saw my love, and knew love, for the very first time in my life. How else might I describe my beautiful dancer, how else to put into words the sheer exquisiteness that was Divinity wrought in the flesh? Carmanio would dance and my heart would leap from its ivory cage to dance with her; her silken slippers would fly as if in air, never touching the floor, 'round and 'round, spin, whirl, reaching for the stars wheeling in the firmament far, far above. Lithe and lifted upon the strings of a lyre she might touch heaven while I watched anchored in the stalls, chained in hell. Hell because I could not touch her, hell because I could not hold her. Music would drift, filter softly in the ether, and the whole company of faceless strangers who overflow the aisles around me are mantled in shadow as if they exist not at all. Who are they- what are they? None can feel what I do; none could know the flame of such wonderful exaltation. All that ever seemed real to me from the moment that I first beheld her was Carmanio- and she alone; no dream was as real as she. The whole world could have been blasted apart and all its peoples dead and I not know it, save that my soul be filled with the glorious vision of her face. How and where had I lived my life before? It was not in the sinuous weaving of the dance, and it was not in the lyric of the song. Ignorant fool, I knew nothing of such things, nothing of the arts at all. Fate alone had called me in here to witness this, Fate had proclaimed that I should know beauty and revere it, bow down before it on broken limbs. Yet what knowledge had I of the theatre, of the dance? None whatsoever. And for certain, when as a Government soldier trained to be alert in the whirlpool of civil unrest that was Paris, there was no thought reserved for artifice and entertainment. Death alone may come swiftly, faster than the morrow.

But here in this gilded palace of dreams was fantasy and glamour; here was beauty. Here I could be absolved from the order to kill, here I could forget the knife and the rifle and the screaming and the blood. This golden world existed in another sphere away from all of that- and it no longer mattered. For here was Carmanio. Carmanio gave to me something akin to hope- something to aspire to even if it seems a hope unrealistic. Simply by dancing she wove magic about my soul, captured me forever. Hers was a special aura, glowing, ethereal, a golden light that emanated from her spirit. Beside Carmanio, all others paled and fell like dying, lustreless spent and withered leaves. She alone was the flower. Clusters of chipped stars scintillated in the halo of her raven tresses, flashing from intense white to blue and silver. The moon entranced fell trapped in the indigo pools of her eyes; the pure white, winter snow was sullied compared to the fine alabaster shade of her skin and the ruby could do no justice to the hot fires that played upon her lips. Enraptured, I could think of none but she, of no one but Carmanio, for she smote them all, not one other beauty existed. In hushed awe the curtains would fold back, pulled magically into the eaves, gold tassel and red velvet, the stage dim and shadowed. And from the shadows a lambent promise, flickering candlelight, vaulted interiors; a painted window framed with tall trees and purple clouds, the moon aureoled and hazy is fixed like a huge coin in the black of the sky. Thin, softly muted strings rise in eddies from the orchestra pit; the air is dense with heady stocks and perfumes. The lights flare and the chorus line enters from left and right, synchronized and spinning, clouds of soft pastel, figurines that a breath might blow into the atmospheres that the shadows might engulf with a sigh. And there is Carmanio, to the left, her lovely arms reaching out to embrace only me, her ruby lips pursed to blow me a kiss, her eye fixed to mine and mine alone. She flies effortlessly through her steps, _'etre aux anges'_. And from that very first moment, the moment that I beheld Carmanio, I knew I loved her alone. Her face haunted me, for I saw it afterwards, _everywhere. _In every painting of a pretty girl I saw her face; a rustle of lace and a tinkling laugh sparked thoughts of she. How could I ever win that love, place in her tiny grasp the whole of my wild, beating heart? For Carmanio is the light that disperses all shadows, gives my heart a joy and happiness that it never knew before. A passing flirtation, a night with a whore; none of these things are ever love. Yet the heart has called me down to destiny, to worship this beautiful dancer, win her as my one and only love. So she passes through her dance while I watch entranced, hypnotised; and when the curtain falls I applaud long after the last clap has died, I cheer long after the final echo has fallen silent. And I leave the Theatre des Anges walking on the very air upon which she has floated.

I knew nothing of Carmanio, nothing of her life, but I lingered every night at the bier of her existence, inventing it to fill the painful gaps in my reality. How do these creatures come to the dance, are they born to it, or is it, like my love, a cruel trick of fate? Perhaps she arrived penniless from the provinces, begged for a better life upon the doorstep of a wealthy patron, or perhaps she had never suffered poverty at all but lived comfortably in the fashionable Faubourg St. Germain. She might have dressed in lace and satin, or tattered cotton, ate fine cuisine or subsisted on lean broth alone, followed a strict religion and prayed to God every day- three times a day and twice before sleeping! Did she move secretly with the rebel parties who fought against the Government, a beautiful _pursuivant, _caught up in a dangerous intrigue of lies and deception? That she was of high birth or of low, her mother a whore, her father Louis Napoleon himself; that she could love a soldier, _'hors de combat'_; how could I ever know? These things I conjectured all through that first night, these things and countless others, endless possibilities. What did her lips taste like, were they sweet, yes surely sweet, and her skin perfumed and silken soft? I lay with her in a bower of ivy and sculptured gods, a secret place conjured by the imagination and here I kissed her passionately and she in return kissed me. In cool shadows I revered her body and in darkness I desecrated it. But the truth is this; my desires could only live in dreams. I had seen her fellow countrymen fighting their fellow countrymen, friends and foe cut down by the bayonet, felled by the bullet. Had she not seen these horrors too? Was she merely this and nothing more- a decoration to colour the grim, grey world through which the living crawled, something lovely, a fanciful diversion? But from all this civil unrest and disharmony might there not bloom the flower of love? A glorious thought indeed and one to cling to that out of a bleak world something pure might be mine. And I cleaved to that thought even though it was a lie and it didn't seem so ridiculous after all and it took root, my devotion, grew bigger than my own heart, star-studded beneath the darkest of clouds, beat within my skin hot and furious and would not let me be, not for a moment.

Such foolish romantic notions you say, but they are the truth of my feelings. I would gather Carmanio to my breast, having swept her off her feet and she would kiss me, seated beside there on a magical steed, the Grande Chevalier riding with his adoring love to the kingdom beyond the sunrise. But of course you are correct; I invest my love with the overwrought embellishments of a fictional romance. Who can win and hold forever a love like she, and especially in uncertain times like these? And once again the unfortunate truth, my love for Carmanio is unrealised. She does not know me, does not know that I exist. For what am I to her but another face in the stalls that she barely even sees beyond the footlights? And mine of course is not a face to remember, unlike her beautiful visage. She does not realise that I am there just for her, even though her cobalt eye has never alighted on my own, even as much as I have fantasised that it did. Her red lips never kissed mine own, as much as I wished that they would; her slender arms never embraced me and never did her heart, beating within her breast, beat against mine. These things are the sad truth.

And so, after the ballet I return to my humble lodgings, an attic studio in a crumbling house in the Rue de la Chapelle. I take the stairs quietly, twisting about the rickety ascent with slow steps, aware that Etienne the Concierge might wake and be disgruntled. My room welcomes me, filled with a myriad of painted faces shadowed and smiling in the faint lamp light- things with sightless eyes and speechless tongues. Passing amid these shades I go to the roof garden and sit perched far above the bleak, smoky nightscape of Paris, watching listlessly as a fire burns scarlet somewhere in the distance. As a gunshot echoes dully, followed closely by a wretched, dying scream.

Morning brought a knocking at my door; an irritating and horribly insistent tapping that sounded in my dreaming ear like nails being driven into a coffin. Too early for visitors, and who should wish to visit me? Naked, dishevelled and unwashed I was feigning to answer the door, buried my head beneath the pillow and hoped, prayed that the visitor would go away. I should like to have stayed dreaming of Carmanio- dreaming that I lay with my love, consumed by her flesh and burning. But the knocking became louder and a bright voice on the other side of the panel was insistent, made me throw off the sheets and stumble from my bed, lift the latch, pull back the lock.

"Bonjour, Henri," Lilianne laughs coquettishly, come up from her dingy room 'neath mine, "It is early, I know, but the morning is so beautiful, the sun is so bright, I wanted to share it." And she adds slyly, "You might take me out to breakfast." And standing there, dredged up unwillingly from an oubliette of dark dreams, I can but accede to her wishes. In Lilianne's smile there is sunshine, in her eyes the blue of cornflowers; her curls the golden grain of wheat accented by the pink blush of rouge on her cheeks- almost like a doll won in a fairground arcade. She chases away the shadows for one brief moment, scatters the illusion of unrealised dreams. How can I refuse? I wave her in and close the door.

There is no false modesty between us, for a woman of her profession has seen more naked men than I have eaten croissants. So as I slowly dress, her taffeta skirts swishing on the bare floors, Lilianne crosses to my rumpled bed and pulling back the dark curtains, climbs up, stretches out with her pretty head dangling over the edge, her arms folded across her bosom. Gazing up at the blue through the skylight she laughs at me, "Even upside down you look good enough to eat." And I reply to the contrary, needing soap and water, I might not taste too good. She rolls onto her side and leans upon an elbow, pretty as a picture, tossing her curls and sighing, "Let me be the judge of that." I shake my head and pretend to be shocked, "Lilianne!"

"Would you mind if I ask you something my Henri?"

"What might that be?" I reply, seeking my trousers and pulling on a reasonably clean shirt.

"It's just that I have often wondered about those scars on your back and you have never told me how you got them, not even when I have begged. Please tell me Henri…do they still hurt?"

I cast the mere flicker of a glance over my bare shoulder. How strange that she should begin the morning with such a conversation. "They are unimportant, past history. Besides, why do you wish to know now?"

"I don't know. Perhaps for some unknown reason I feel part of your pain…"

"My pain!" I laugh at her. "You are such an innocent. You should not waste your sympathies on me Lilianne, and anyway it is all past now, there is no pain."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry."

"Then you are forgiven and it is forgotten."

So she sighs and takes her roving eye from the frame of my back and looks around herself, as if this huge room can never cease to amaze her. Her line of vision is a slow, measured sweep that ignores the books all piled up in various heaps in different corners. She has little need for any life observations recorded and forgotten within black leather and gold embossing, fact or fiction, histories and fabrications, knowledge or romance. What are they but one person's clouded point of view? For there is only one fact in her life and that is the fact of her life, no romance, for whom can love a _'fille de joie'_? Lilianne gives but token recognition to the small collection of pistols and sabres, a long rifle and various other odds and ends that speak of the soldier who I once was. She rarely asks if the war had changed me in any way, is not interested in weapons that kill and maim. Indeed, she is so innocent that she fails to connect the war with the scars on my back. She glances at but cares not for the unrinsed wine glasses and the empty cognac bottles, that my clothes are piling up unwashed (the few that I possess), or that I have neglected an ailing geranium, struggling for life in a planter on the roof-top patio. No, like the child that she is, Lilianne loves the toys. For here in my studio I have created a wonderland. Every shelf and mantle, tabletop and available space is taken up by the fruits of my labours. For you see, before conscription and before the fighting, before Napoleon surrendered and before the Third Republic, by profession, I was a toy-maker. Such was my father, the man from whom I learned the trade, and this accentuated by the hands and the eye of the artist, my good mother's legacy, gave me a wonderful talent. To delight the child and the child in everyone, I create from remnants and plaster and wood; I weave and I stitch with thread and Chantilly, I paint the smile and the frown and the yawn and the tear. And I hammer and chisel and plane and nail and paste and lacquer. And this is my living. My world.

"So beautiful," exclaims Lilianne, sliding from the bed to trace a finger over a miniature Notre Dame, to blow dust as cannon-fire o'er a complete fighting regiment, to contemplate the sorrows of a clown. The silver-stained mirror on the washstand catches her as she weaves through a forest of wondrous trees all hung with wooden marionettes with articulated joints. My razor scratches over foaming soap, cutting away the dark stubble that peppers my jaw.

"You must spend every spare moment of your life doing this," Lilianne tells me over her shoulder.

"No," I reply disinterestedly, "not every moment." Guiltily I kick an empty wine bottle beneath the washstand.

"Do people appreciate these wonders, these magical toys that you make?"

"Most of this will go to charity my dear. I sell just enough to keep me alive."

"Such a shame, for here is a fortune."

"No fortune, unless you count a child's happiness. All this is simply good will."

"That seems silly, to work so hard and all for nothing. People should pay you Henri, and pay well!"

"Who pays well for anything?" I ask, waxing my moustache ends to fine points. "But you've no need to query the truth of that, you've lived in this city longer than I; you know what people are like. On the contrary, do they pay _you_ well?"

"You know," she rattles on deliberately not listening for truth might cut and wounds like that might never cease bleeding, "If I had all the gold francs in France I'd make you rich."

"Such a noble idea." I know I should apologise for saying the stupid, unkind things that I do. "Why would you want to do such a silly thing as that?"

Unless you have fallen in love with me…

A cold stone falls into the pit of my guts.

Hastily I button my trousers and straighten my collar. Lilianne replaces a tiny ballerina on its stand.

"Because," she says, "If I could do that for you, all these marvellous treasures would be mine."

Shaking my head I scoop up a few coins and slide them into my pocket. It is imperative that we be on our way for my chamber has suddenly become stifling and close.

"You would soon lose them," I tell her, almost cruelly. "In all likelihood you wouldn't even keep them for a day. If I know you Lilianne you'd give them all to the first tear shed in your palm."

"There are many treasures in the world," she whispers almost inaudibly, her pretty smile falling, "just finding and keeping them, that is the hard part. And sometimes they are not fashioned from wood or lead."

She pauses in front of my mirror, looking at the young woman who will soon be an old, old crone; for the likes of Lilianne, fate is never kind. Her finger touches my lips and she asks, "Do we all pay for our treasures in coin once we've found them?" I push her fingers away as tenderly as I can, knowing that tears are about to fill those cornflower-blue eyes.

"It's so like you," I chide, "happy one moment, sad the next and it's my entire fault. I thought you wanted to go for breakfast? Come, enough of this!" I take up a shaved-wood rose that I have made, a soft crimson bud about to open. "Pour vous."

"Oh!" she exclaims, dipping her nose to smell the cheap perfume that scents it then looks up at me, full of joy, adoration.

"Now come," I command, taking up a walking cane, "Le voiture awaits and I am hungry!"

We pass through the door and it closes on the silent world of the toys, miniature allusions to life; tongues that cannot speak, eyes that cannot see, lips that can never kiss. Notre Dame does not chime the Angeles; the tiny ballerina does not dance.

In the Bois de Boulogne, under the vault of the bright blue sky we have come to sit and talk awhile. I watch the couples as they stroll in the wooded park amid the flowers, and I think that there is nothing as far removed from the war as this pretty place in the sunshine. Lilianne and I are seated on a bench under a Satyr, flanked by topiary, attended by scavenging, cooing birds.

"Did you lose your leg in the army?" asks Lilianne as we sit feeding the leftover crumbs from our breakfast croissants to the pigeons. Once again she crosses into territory that she would normally steer clear of and not broach unless inebriated. Under such circumstances I can forgive her, but for the second time today she has questioned me about things she knows I don't like to speak about and I feel uncomfortable.

"There you go asking questions again. Am I to be interrogated all of the day?"

"Oh don't be angry with me Henri, I know so little about you and you know me as if I were a book you have read from cover to cover."

"If you mean did I lose it heroically," I reply to her question, "The less than romantic answer is no!"

"She looks down at my left leg, amputated just above the knee, a scuffed, wooden peg strapped on to the thigh.

"Is it terribly uncomfortable?" she asks.

"I no longer feel any pain," I grasp the stiff, false joint with both hands and shake it.

"Oh, Henri, don't," cries Lilianne alarmed, "What if..."

"What if what?"

Her pretty features screw up in a mixture of anxiety and embarrassment.

"Monsieur Blot, you are incorrigible," she returns, tossing her golden curls and joining me in some light laughter, toying with her crimson bud, tracing it softly down my cheek. "Do you still wish you were a soldier?"

"If I were a soldier still, I would not have all that time to devote to the making all those toys you love so much...now would I?"

She smiles her agreement, but returns to her question. "You haven't answered me, not really."

"And what is there to tell?"

"A lot more than what you're telling now!"

I laugh lightly, tearing off another crumb and tossing it to the flurry of birds.

"Why be so mysterious?" she asks, bringing her face closer to mine perhaps searching for a flicker of a truth she may never know.

"Mysterious, moi?" I act as if I'm incredulous, "Why, my life is an open book."

"That is not true and you lead me on. You know I can't read." she replies flatly, a speckled pigeon pecking at the glinting buckle of her shoe.

"Then I guess you might never know. We all have to have some secrets Lilianne."

We look at each other for a long moment, seeing and not seeing each as we really are, two people in the same city who live in the same building yet existing in completely different worlds. And a silence falls between us. I sense that she wishes so much to understand the hidden parts of me but has been unable to say so, for maybe she feels that to know my life is to know my heart, mixing her feelings up with devotions that can never be reciprocated. But surely Lilianne doesn't fool herself with half-hearted hopes that I love her, even though a little part inside of her soul seems to cry desperately, longingly, to cling to a hope shining beyond fondness and friendship. What man, even one mutilated such as I, can love a prostitute? It seems like a cruel thought, but alas it is the truth and to lie would be to lie to myself, for my heart belongs to another, there is no denying this fact. Lilianne would never understand should I tell her that I love a dancer.

Another spinning crumb finds the pigeons clustering at our feet, flocking greedily, fighting among themselves for the pitiful remnant morsel. Watching the birds Lilianne remarks hollowly, "There is the heart once it's lain bare, torn to pieces, betrayed."

She glances away, a shadow etching itself across her face so that her smile is muted and her blue eyes darkened. Somehow my words have again hurt her, wounded her and I don't quite understand why I keep doing this. Is it simply to hold her at distance, forbid her to draw too close, or my own fear of the consequence?

"I would never do that to your heart," she sighs.

"Rend it?"

She meets my words with a blank stare.

"How can you be sure? In this world anything is possible. You are so young you don't really know what the heart is capable of." I reply uncomfortably.

"Don't be so sure of that my friend," she whispers, her eyes blinking shut as if to suppress a tear.

And for some unaccountable reason a sick feeling begins in my stomach.

A short while after I suggest we return, as the day is so bright we should forget our silly words and our foolish expectations of life. The ride back in the cab is peppered with crippled conversation, innocuous trivialities that are like jumping huge gaps in the road. Feeling horribly awkward I suggest we set ourselves down close to home and walk the last few streets and enjoy the sun. But even as I say these things I tell myself that all is not well, something out of sync with my heart companions us, our shadows like oily stains on the cobbled sidewalk. And despite the sunshine, which no longer seems warm, the sky has become dimmer, a shade the hue of ashes. My spirits have fallen, rolled a stone on my soul; and Lilianne begins to chat merrily and smiles as if her former melancholy has never existed. I find it bizarre how the passage of a few brief minutes in time can rearrange the lines of your life, and I want to be alone, leave Lilianne to be by myself. Soon I find I am no longer even listening to her chatter. We walk and each step takes me further into the gulf of depression, another step and another, the next a little darker than the one before. And I know that by the time we reach the Rue de la Chapelle, I shall fake a headache and retire to my rooms; leave Lilianne to do whatever it is she does with her days...alone.

Yet perhaps, despite this sudden and evasive emotion it is good to know a friendship such as ours, to have that special bonding without the complications of love. Although maybe I have given Lilianne the wrong impression, maybe she misinterprets our moments together as love. No, no, I am simply being irrational, for she is fully aware of her situation and mine and would not venture into the realm of the devoted, not for one such as me. And for Lilianne I know sex is a means to a living, for she was not born of the higher classes who need not work; nor was she born of the middle classes with their false, pretended airs, smiling ludicrously from the far side of shop counters. Lilianne is a whore who works the streets, caring not, as she so often declared, to work the lurid rooms in a Paris bordello. Oft times I would ask her if she might not feel safer working in one of the city's many brothel houses, and just as often she would laugh away my concerns. "Besides, I am going to marry a rich man one day soon, what need shall I have of a whorehouse then?"

Ha! There are no rich men wanting a whore as a wife. Or am I the fool who does not see truth, that Lilianne knows this fact and cleaves to me inch by inch closer every day. I cannot concern myself with her life, must not for perhaps I too fear the dread of dependency. Rarely would I ask for a slice of her history, and if indeed when the tongue slipped-

"And what of your family Lilianne?" she would laugh and any real answer would be evaded as if you had not asked at all. Lilianne of course could not hold her tongue when suitably imbibed, her tale was told often though she never even realised, told to me in drunken sorrows- after which I discretely forgot. The truth was she knew nothing of either her mother or her father, but was raised by a slatternly wench in the meanest of conditions, taught the grim realities of prostitution scant of what might have been her thirteenth birthday. She never talked very much upon the subject of herself unless she was tipsy, and I never pursued such information. Yet piece by piece I formed a little picture of her life, sad life, listened as she skimmed only briefly over the death of the nameless woman whom she called 'Aunty', who sold Lilianne's flesh in barter and trade, heard the struggles to live that came after. Perhaps my emotions were moved by her, pathetic and trusting and strangely innocent, Lilianne was all of these despite her way of life- but who am I to judge? I could offer her no solution and I did not want to interfere, I could only watch on and push her ever so slightly away. She would have rebuked me in any case had I told her gentle lies. It is not that I do not care about Lilianne but I fear to live her life, yet I worry for her nonetheless. Often the late evening or the thin, translucent blush of dawn might find Lilianne entering the house as quietly as a mouse, for if she had had no customer that evening she would need to evade Etienne, the landlord. Etienne always lurked in the shadows and kept a spying eye on those who came and went in his house. There was no way imaginable that he would have let Lilianne conduct her business under his roof. And the shadows would find this pretty young woman loosening her hatpins, unbuckling her shoes and creeping up the stair to avoid the monster concierge, to knock ever so gently at my door and hope to find me awake. And perhaps, maybe for comfort, she would come to my bed, exhausted from walking so many hours in the cold, where the gas-lit streets were not so bright, where the gentlemen were not so friendly, to hold each other and keep each other warm. With Lilianne there was a mutual comfort to be shared, but not love. Sometimes this made me feel oddly guilty, as if I were taking the advantage though I knew that I was not. Money never exchanged hands, and she would not have accepted any. Our lovemaking was gentle and somewhat restrained; she would demand no adventure and lodge no complaint, and so when we were together there were no melodramatics in our rather perfunctory couplings. Understanding and making no demands other than that of our scant needs kept us close but also distant, gave us companionship without constraint. Or so I would like to have thought.

And so we walked and made small talk about nothing in particular, her slender arm looped through mine, her hips swaying with a slight exaggeration. For myself there was no public shame in our friendship; she was what she was, young and pretty, a trifle desperate, here marking time. And strolling casually in the Rue de la Government Provisoire it could have been any day lifted from the pages of my life, her life too, it might have been a moment akin to any other, save that a pall had fallen over me and dampened my spirits. And I knew the cause, the core of the problem. I knew it, but did not wish to know.

"Carmanio."

"Pardon," says Lilianne, tilting her head up to meet my eyes, "who?"

I stumble and choke off my words. Ah, how I could kick myself, the brain having lost control of the mouth. I attempt to joke, passing it off as nothing. She stabs her elbow into my side.

"And I thought you loved only me!" Lilianne's humour is intended as mock jealousy but comes across as being laced with something other.

"Oh, but I do," I return, squeezing her little hand and smiling into her doll-like face. "But only on those nights when you don't love another."

Her eyes narrow ever so slightly and she responds almost resentfully, "Ha! That isn't love and you know it. You and all men are the same. The thing between your legs, that's all you know, as if there was nothing else in the world!"

Says I, "Oh, come now, you of all women should not take offence. Lilianne my dear, romance doesn't become you. Find me in your bed whenever the occasion strikes, find me guilty of whatever crime befits the occasion but find me not without a heart."

She laughs a brittle laugh; her pretty lips opening so that her teeth flash like cold pearls, and I am a little lost and opt to say nothing more. In relative silence we continue on our way through the intermittent crowds, the fruit and flower stalls, the vendors of sweet ices, hardly observing the gaudy activities whirling around us. Our walk is becoming oppressive and I begin to count the paces we take, my eyes picking out the far end of the street and wishing we were upon the turn into the Rue de la Chapelle now.

And close to home she stops me and says, "Tell me about Carmanio."

I regard her for a moment, her dress of yellow taffeta, a little feathered hat pinned to her golden curls. She is very pretty, but she is not Carmanio. The pause has created a strange suspense between us. Trepidation enters my heart and my voice is frozen and does not want to come from my throat in case it vomits forth another stream of hurtful nothings.

Says she, "Oh, my dear Henri, do not worry about me. I have my moments but I can live with them. I am not a fool. You put too much weight on the words we fail to utter, trust me that which you fear is never going to happen."

"What do I fear?" I ask her quietly, plucking at my bottom lip and colouring a pale shade of red.

"Do not worry for me and do not think that I have fallen in love with you either!" she chides. I look away and shrug my shoulders, beginning to utter protest but she silences me with a finger pressed to my lips.

"I think you need a little advice" she breaks in. "Tell me about her. Or is she even real?"

Says I: "What is there to tell?"

And Lilianne shakes her head and swears that if we have to go through the routine of silence again she will have to resort to torturing the truth from me. And I am, as always with Lilianne, bewildered.

"Monsieur Blot," she takes an authoritative stance, "Tell me your problem or I shall harangue you all the rest of the day and then all through the night, so that you will have no sleep and eventually you must have it out, or go mad. There shall be offered no salvation."

Alas the paradox of the wounded heart.

And something inside me buckles without protest; for after all, Lilianne is my only confidante and I feel I must tell someone, reveal all that there is to reveal about my petite dancer. So I relate to Lilianne of the first time I ever saw Carmanio, the vision ethereal as she pirouetted beneath the lights of the Theatre des Anges. And I shamelessly tell how my pulse quickened with the stirring of an urge insistent in my blood, how I had eyes for no other than she.

Lilianne smiles wanly and casts her gaze downward, perhaps I have said too much. A dull ache has begun in my head.

"You are not upset?" I ask, the façade of gaiety now long gone from our conversation. Have I been horribly mistaken in thinking Lilianne but a friend and nothing other despite her protests to the contrary?

"No," says she, "Only sad that none shall ever love me as much as you must love her."

"You are so silly," I jest, even though I know that making light of this is not going to ease her obvious pain. "When we are together, that is different, you understand this?"

It seems that for a moment she is struggling to answer, does not want to answer, to voice feelings that run deeper than she wishes to admit. Both of us know the vast differences that stretch between.

"Yes, I know."

"No matter what, you will always be my friend Lilianne." Words though are of little consolation. I might as well say nothing at all for all excuses are cruel.

And then in desperation I turn the conversation to destinies and fates and things ever changing- little, unimportant white lies so that her spirits will lift and my foolish talk of Carmanio be put aside, hopefully forgotten. After a while she shifts her perspective and views, and as it always is, she hides the real, hurt Lilianne behind the mask of the world. She laughs gaily and makes light of her life, saying that perhaps a better vision might be viewed just beyond the fence. Who can tell, perhaps that rich man is waiting just around the corner to sweep her out of my arms and off to a life of luxury, to some castle in the clouds. And she holds me close and declares that without a true friend such as I, she should always walk in the streets, every hour, every day till the soles of her shoes were worn through and her dress torn to tatters. At least I give her friendship in a city of hostiles. I pray for a change to come, to see her married to that rich man yet. But praying does not make it happen. How disillusioned she is, protesting that she is happy and full of life, telling this feigned happiness to a world that simply doesn't care. And it is just like Lilianne to fling off her oppressive mantle with a cry of "Voila!" and point across the street with one outstretched hand, grasping my forearm with the other. So, in the blink of an eyelid the whole world has altered, for she has put aside her melancholy in favour of my happiness; from the shadows into the sunshine, such a strangely innocent creature is Lilianne. Sidestepping a calèche she pulls me up before a window brightly painted with rainbows- a confectioner's shop.

"For your darling Carmanio," she says, flinging her hand out in an exaggerated wave toward the window.

"Carmanio doesn't even know I exist," I protest, "Anyway, what would she want with a one-legged amour?"

"Then you must make her know you." There is a twinkle in Lilianne's eye. "Show her that you love her."

"Oh, and how pray tell am I to do that delicately? I might as well take off my leg and strike her with it. I'm sure she'd enjoy that!"

"Henri, Henri, why do you always sell yourself short?" She looks as if she is about to take off the peg herself and strike me.

"Here is your answer," she declares, beaming as if she has solved with impunity every problem that ever was, save her own. "A candy shop!"

"A candy shop," I repeat, waving my hands expressively in empty air.

"Of course, do you know nothing at all of women!" she gives an exaggerated sigh. "Here lies the solution, the very thing, the key to win your precious Carmanio." And here she pauses, gently flapping my coat lapels in a mock prompting to wake up and see the light; and I take the cue belatedly, my eyes widening, my mouth rounding into a circle.

"I could purchase Carmanio a delicious box of chocolates, no?"

Grinning, Lilianne nods her head.

"And, I could wrap them with tinsel and tie the gift with a pretty bow. And then, once I've declared my undying devotions in a love letter written in the finest copperplate, all that I desire will be mine?"

"I think it may take more than one solitary box of comfits, but haven't you just finished telling me that a better life might be just at my fingertips. Oh, Henri, why don't you try, if you love this woman so much?" And Lilianne is so imploring, so willing to share her faith, "And perhaps you could make her something. You are so clever, make her something special, just for her alone."

The truths of her words are a bizarre echo of my own, shooting home inside my head with the sound of a gunshot. I look up in that instant, look in at the shop window to behold my reflection bisected by the painted rainbow strips on the glass, before it is shattered, flying broken shards inwards that dance with diamond glint over the displays of tinsel wrapped chocolates, shower onto the floor. It is indeed a shot, which has fired, whistled past my head and shattered the confectionery window. There are screams, screams from Lilianne who has fallen to her knees, dropping her crimson bud, her hands flying up to cover her ears, screams from other points as people scatter in all directions. For one dreadful second the world about me is confusion and noise. My first instinct is to protect Lilianne, so I fall to her side, literally throwing my body over hers, shielding her with my embrace, my walking cane clattering to the ground, my wooden leg folding under my weight and twisting. From somewhere behind me there are cries of "Arretez!" but I stay low, Lilianne pressed tightly against me. I can feel her heart thudding in her bosom and her terrified whimpers as she clutches at my body. There are sounds of running footsteps, more shouts and the crack of another rifle shot. When I do finally look around there are three Government soldiers approaching the figure of a man, fallen in a sack onto his side, a trickle of blood welling from a bullet hole over the heart. The Gendarme appears, waving back the crowds who forsake their momentary terror in favour of curiosity.

"Are you all right, not injured?" I ask Lilianne as I help her to her feet.

Says she, tremulously, "Oui, oui. I'm not hurt."

Her hat needs righting, the feather broken; she straightens, brushing dust from her skirts. She stoops and gathers up my cane, sheds a tear for her crimson bud; now begrimed and limp with a broken stem. The storekeeper has come from his shop, arms flailing and gesticulating wildly, angrily giving vent to his disgust at the political clime and the ferocity of all this vicious retribution.

"Oh, just look at my window!" he shouts angrily, bringing his hands up to his face and shaking his head violently. "Who is going to pay, who is going to pay?"

"Not him!" jokes a ruffian cruelly, pointing to the limp carcass in the street and spitting.

"You," calls one of the Gendarmes, ordering the spectator from the crowd. "Take this scum away."

The man looks around from face to face, incredulous that he should be singled out, raising both palms to his chest and sneering.

"What do I do with him?" he asks, spitting again at the policeman's feet.

"Just do what you're told to do and ask no questions."

And I look across at this impertinent individual, strangely thinking that I know his face. But it is not possible. His is the face of filth incarnate, the face of one who enjoys such lurid spectacle.

"Just get rid of it, idiot!" retorts the law as a low snigger goes through the crowd. The man glances about, his eye blindly passing over mine, finding Lilianne, his lips stretching wide into a putrid grin. And Lilianne shudders and draws in closer to me, clutching at my arm and looking the other way. She shields her face but is it to turn from the bloodied corpse or to hide from this vile creature? I find my arm tightening about her waist and hold her close. The man begins to drag the corpse onto the sidewalk, hardly taking his lewd gaze from the pretty girl by my side. Soon the crowd jostles forward and the scene on the pavement is swallowed up and we are moving quickly down the street. The world seems stilled and hollow and without sound, nothing else moves, nothing is heard, and I find I do not even reply when Lilianne tells me: "Henri, you were almost killed!"

A peculiar lethargy seeped unwilling into my soul, and for the rest of the day I did not leave my rooms, nor did I work. I couldn't. All of my painted craftsmanship sat mute and stupid, offering me no conversation, and when eventually I slept, sending me no dreams. And the day passed silently overhead, scudding clouds that deepened as the eve drew on, shadows phasing from water-washed grey to mulberry on my eyelids as I slept. In the early eve I was awoken by the sound of a contention on the stair below my landing. Curious, I rose and quietly opened my door just a sliver, just enough to overhear the dialogue passing below.

Says Etienne, the concierge, "Mademoiselle Broyer, you have still not paid me your lodgings for the month. I must ask for the money or I shall have to evict you."

Although I could not see him I knew the cat had cornered the canary.

Says Lilianne, "I am aware of this Monsieur le Guyot..."

Etienne dramatically cuts her sentence short. "Aware! You say the silliest things sometimes and I have been very lenient indeed. This is not the first time you have failed to pay. This is not a charity house; I simply cannot afford your keep. Everyone else in this building manages their due rent, why can't you?"

"I am sorry…"

"You are always sorry but I shall have no apologies this time my dear, only francs. And if you cannot deliver I shall need to terminate your lodging. If things are bad for you I suggest you make them better."

Lilianne manages a few slight words, a few dull promises.

Says Etienne: "I care not, you have till tomorrow or else you may as well live in the street."

There are heavy footsteps on the stair, the sound of Lilianne sighing; and I close the door and stand with my back to it heartlessly thinking not of the scene that has just transpired. But of Carmanio.

Night kept me company in the roof garden. Out of the dark rang the iron tongues of bells, hollow and muffled; a mournful calling to lost souls. In the night sky the moon was a jagged sliver of curved ice, a cruel smile among the trusting stars. And the city lay out before me all smoky and darksome, conceited and devoid of humility. The city is indeed a beast, a huge crouching monster waiting to strike. I reflect upon the incident outside the confectionery- a dreadful slaying in broad daylight, political unrest and little safety in the streets. Somewhere in a stinking alley nearby or somewhere far from eye and ear Lilianne plies her trade so that she might pay her rent, keep her dingy room and her integrity. And beneath my feet in the shabby tenement below, Monsieur le Guyot lies slumbering with his coarse flesh bound in a tangle 'round his wife, who need not pay for a room, need not walk unfriendly streets at night. And Monsieur le Guyot sleeps clear of conscience because he has done what he must and dreams not of impropriety nor questionable morals; and with the most spurious of tongues his words are demons that pursue Lilianne through the dim-lit, dangerous avenues of Paris, seeking some little exchange of favours with which to placate her landlord. For poor Lilianne is exempt from that much desired, elusive human quality, respect. She is a woman without esteem and therefore sanctioned to barter and trade with her body. And yet I find I can neither condemn nor condone Etienne, after all he has the right to ask for his rent though I cannot change the circumstances, cannot make things better.

Carriages pass in the street at irregular intervals, horses clopping tiredly in the soupy light thrown from the lampposts, doll-sized figures meet and blend together amid the shadows. From my high lookout I have domain over the earth, the city panorama a black tapestry stitched with amber lights blinking in and out of its inky folds. I have spent most of the evening seated almost motionless like a roof-top gargoyle up here above the streets, perhaps thinking to catch a glimpse of Lilianne as she returns from her degrading proclivities. The air is crisp, so I am wrapped in an old rug, a glass of brandy half-drained to ward off the chill, and one should think me an apparition should one espy me hunched amid the shadows. I cannot sleep, for to sleep is to lay down with death, and I cannot help but feel somehow responsible for poor Lilianne and her plight. It is true that I could help her, offer to pay her rents, offer her lodgings even in my own rooms if the need arose. Perhaps she would accept, perhaps not; and then I tell myself that if I did such a thing I would be courting disaster, for might she not misconstrue my friendship, conclude that I did indeed love her? Does she not already? But I tell myself too that I am not a maker of destinies; the fly often is caught in the web, the rabbit's paw in the trap and realises always when it is too late. My conscience rattled away inside my head and I could not find an answer to any of the problems that assailed it, not Lilianne, not Etienne, not Carmanio. Till eventually an overwhelming pity made me seek out Lilianne and offer her the assistance I knew she would refuse, but she had gone, departed for the shadowlands. In her absence I determined to impress upon Etienne the dreadful suffering that he would be responsible for if Lilianne were to be thrown to the streets, but a reprieve from her situation was not a bargain to be struck so easily. Lilianne, Etienne says, is not the only prostitute in Paris. Her story could be told a thousandfold and who would care? I chose not to listen to this but proffered, in her stead coinage that was swallowed greedily by the closing of his meaty paw.

"I do not run a charity," he sniffed, prodding the coins with the fat stub of a finger, "and I will not be taken advantage of!"

"Do you think it right that Lilianne must prostitute herself so that she might keep a roof over her head?"

"I do not make such judgments Monsieur, she lives the life she chooses to live."

"She chooses to sell her body?" I am somewhat offended by his stand off. "What woman trades her flesh by choice. Etienne, you are being unfair…"

"Well Monsieur Blot, if it concerns you so deeply, without appearing to sound rude, perhaps the two of you could come to some amicable arrangement, no?"

"Please enlighten me…"

Etienne squints up his beady little pig eyes and licks the thick opening of his mouth. He looks at me with an air of incredible contempt. "Why don't you marry her?" And his words are flat and stupid and just what I would have expected from his tongue.

"You are such a silly, ineffectual man," I tell him, turning my back and shaking my head, such a reprehensible creature he is. He went on, attempting to justify his lack of concern with a torrent of excuses regarding the upkeep of his house, and that charity was a street he had driven down one too many times. I vociferated my disgust to which he retaliated, "Charity, Monsieur Blot has never put food in the mouth." I remarked that it wasn't food he'd been taking into his stupid orifice, knocking the handful of coins from his paw, seeing the panic in his eyes as they bounced down the steps and he off after them. I turned and left him scrabbling in the stairwell, desperate for his fistful of ill-gotten gain. I went to my apartments and slammed the door, my head full of anger and disbelief. Below I heard the quake of Etienne's heavy footsteps and the banging of a lower door, and I knew his tirade of defamation would burn the ear of his long-suffering spouse.

And as the night wore on and the sky became like ashes sifted through the gathering of clouds, I sat in the roof garden and did not sleep until sometime close to morning, when I dozed fitfully, in and out of horrible dreams.

_"Come, come!" I hear the voice shouting, a call above the booming thunder. "Come, the palace has been taken!" _

_A dirty wild-eyed face pushes itself into mine; a firm hand grasps my shoulder. His bravado and his relentless grip are pushing me forward though I feel in my heart that I don't want to go, that this carnage is not for me. My head is reeling from the noise and, though I hardly understand what is being said, I know that, this day, victory is ours! _

_Soon I am running with my companions through the smoke and the ash and the whirling debris, and despite my reservations I find I am become like them, like animals, whooping, damned creatures that cannot be restrained. In no time at all I have forgotten my fears, forsaken them for the uprush of the moment. We call out our victory cries and hold our sabres high. _

_From out of this chaos we come upon a small cluster of women who are standing screaming and sobbing in the street, their men lying dead at their feet, blood seeping into the earth. In war, the stench of the enemies' blood is sweet, not repellent, and it calls up a beast from within that will not be denied. All too easily I find myself giving in to its murderous insistence. I see her standing there, shielding a small child. But it does her no good, for the shrieking infant is torn from her grasp as she beats at my chest with balled fists, her eyes streaming tears of anger and hatred. Throwing down my rifle I clench my hands about her neck to stop her dreadful screaming. They grip with a shocking vehemence about the delicate lady's throat, severing the breath from her lungs and bringing her eyes forth, bulging from their sockets. How she struggles and claws within my grasp! I squeeze and squeeze, watching her hot life throb within my grasp, but still I cannot let her go. I feel her trachea give way as the larynx is crushed, the snapping sound kindling a terrible, overwhelming urge that flames through my veins, but still I continue squeezing her throat till her body goes limp and is given over to death. I release my grasp and watch her fall to the ground like a broken doll. A beautiful, broken doll. I stand staring down at her, oddly touched by her utter vulnerability, as all around me the world has gone mad from war. The corpse's dead eyes too are staring patiently up at me, unafraid, waiting for me to move. Her arms are open and welcoming me into death's embrace. Her dress is torn all the way up to her belly; one leg is straight while the other bends just so that I can slightly view the triangle of hair crowning her thighs. I reached down to…_

Abruptly I awoke, my glass having slipped from my grip and broken on the tiles, my stomach churning from the ghastly imagery of the nightmare still stark within my retinas. But there was something else that had returned me to world of the woken, a strange knowledge that I cannot explain told me that Lilianne had returned. It was a chill feeling that shook me alert, a weird thing, almost urgent, that made me start up and bolt, heart pounding for the street door. She was hunched over in the hall, gasps or sobs; I cannot say which coming from her as I lurched down the stair. A scuffling sound came from Monsieur le Guyot's room, a flame taking life in the crack beneath the door, and that door peeling back, a hole punched in darkness.

"What is all the fuss," the concierge ejaculates, straightening his shirt, but ignoring the buttons; the timid, dishevelled face of his wife swimming within the watery well of shadows inside the door, a guttering candle throwing wild illuminations over the four of us.

"Etienne," the shadow woman insists, "not so loud, think of our guests!"

"Shut up!" he snaps at her, filling the doorway with his bulk and raising his candle high. "What is this?"

I reach Lilianne who has buckled and slid down the wall, the street door wide and gaping open upon the misty night, her door key clutched tightly between bloodied fingers.

"Lilianne!" I cry, taking her tenderly in my arms, holding her gently against my breast.

Etienne reprises his insensitive questions.

"Be quiet!" I shout, turning on him savagely, "Shut up and leave us. I will help her. You are not needed here, send for the physician...now!"

"Monsieur Blot, please not to forget that I am the concierge of this building..."

"Don't you care that this girl has been beaten?" I hiss, his face colours, florid in the flickering candles yellow flame. I stand awkwardly, not even realising what it is that I am doing. Reflex and anger make me want to hurl myself upon the concierge, to push him violently against the wall and curl my hands about his thick neck. Etienne seems to read the intent in my eyes and stumbles back, almost dropping the candle.

"You don't care do you?" I throw at him, my accusation sharp as an arrow fired into his heart. Etienne's eyes are expanding, betraying the dread, which shakes his soul. And in the watery light of the dancing candles the entry-hall pitches and sways with mad shadows. With a grunt I turn from Monsieur le Guyot who holds his arm out, extended to ward me off, his wife gives a little shriek and tugs at her husband's arm. I almost laugh at his absurdly defensive actions, as if I should pose any threat to Etienne.

"Keep off me sir," he splutters, turning to his wife, then points a warning finger at me, his large frame trembling. "You take her then, take the whore! But you make sure her rent is met," he glares stupidly, "and yours too for that matter, Monsieur Blot." And he slams his door, a muffled stream of invective leaking from the gap beneath.

In the shifting darknesses there are sounds and shadows moving. I hear the click of several doors closing. And with difficulty I stand, lifting Lilianne into my arms, carrying her, a broken doll, limp and faint, up to my room. The bloody key falls heavily upon the stair, released from her grasp as she is released from consciousness. And there I lay her out on my bed, torn and bloodied on the pillows.

I light a candle and then another and place them by my bed where I watch over Lilianne. In the feeble glow of the candle flames the young woman lies ruined, her golden curls matted and dishevelled, her yellow taffeta dress ripped and rent, blood stained and blood caked, blotches on the fabric widening and going black. Lilianne's face and arms are decorated with deep plum bruises, her right eye swollen closed, the flesh puffy. A trail of blood seeps over her lower lip, leaks from a split where a fist has broken teeth and smashed her jaw.

"Oh, Lilianne," I cry as I gently push back her tousled hair, hold her close and kiss her pallid cheek, "What has happened to you, what have they done?" And it is all that I can do to hold back the tears of shame and guilt, anguish and anger, waiting for the doctor who may never come, if Etienne has even bothered to send for him. I find a shallow basin and bathe her mutilations with a clean cloth, salt and warm water. And all the time I attend her wounds she does not stir nor make a sound, and I was sickened further when I removed her dress, for there the blood oozed from where it ought not. But by this time, Lilianne had long passed into the shadows.

Above, through the skylight the night bled into the day, leaking black into grey and grey into rose-gold, smudges of smoke and tendrils of damp fog translucent in the rising sun. The shutters over the skylight do not close; gape wide through years of disuse, warped by the elements, neglected by time, permanently flung back so that I cannot shut out the glare of the morning. With difficulty I managed to string up a large length of canvas to afford some shade; and she lies unconscious in my bed all white like a ghost, fragile, hardly breathing, barely living. She sleeps deeply, so deeply and so still that I think her dead, crossing to the bed with my heart leaping with expectation inside its ivory cage. And reaching over I run my fingertips across her pale cheek, touching lightly the cut on her lip which has ceased to bleed, the puffy eye turning blackly purple. Above her I hover, guardian angel, for the doctor has not come, waiting for life to shake her miraculously awake. Outside in the street the day progresses with its noises amplified and its odours intense and sickly in the air- stale smells of smoke and horse shit that creep up the masonry and in through the windows. I was afraid to leave her and go for the physician myself, what if she should die while I was gone? If that happened I could never forgive myself. Time taunts us, settles for brief moments upon the lips of death, laughs mockingly and flees into the lengthening shadows as the day once again courts the night. And eventually, in the late afternoon there is a knocking at my door; and it is indeed the physician who has come at last for a cursory glance and a feeble- "I think there is nothing I can do." He lifts her white hand as if he touches something repellent, seeks the vein for a pulse; shrugs his shoulders when he finds the weakest beat trembling beneath his insensitive fingertips. Under his breath I can smell the faint odour of cognac and I berate him and refuse to pay when he asks for money, his tardiness I cannot reward. "I have come, Monsieur as soon as I could. You do realise that this is not the only patient I have seen today- and it is late!" I take his arm and push him quickly through my door. "Get out!" I tell him, my tone threatening, my eyes flashing on the point of anger. "Get out and go back to your bottle you old fool!" The doctor glares at me balefully before I shut the door in his face. And with his leaving I lay down exhausted beside Lilianne, to join with her at length in troubled sleep, called down to the cold graveside to dream in the velvet confines of the coffin. Night sends me torments in the colours of dark dreams. I see Carmanio as I imagine she should be, pure and gently willowed like the lily, finer than porcelain and woven into the fabric of the eve. I see her dancing; dancing her grace and beauty to the music of my heart, and I am joyous for my heart can know no other desire. But her step is faltering, even as I watch. I call out to warn her, catch her if I can, but my lips are stitched together and my arms are bound to my sides. She falls, a dead puppet no longer dancing, limp and prone at the edge of the night. And I see Lilianne, my sweet, sweet Lilianne. She has come from the darkness all aglow and burning with the light of the holy; and she stands above the dead Carmanio with an outstretched arm. Under the cold sliver of the horned moon she raises a hard and glinting shard, traces a thin red line over her wrist, stained pearls spill in carmine beaded strings, splash upon the blue lips of the dancer dead. And the corpse opens its eyes and looks up with a new sight stolen from the stars; dead-alive lips drinking in the vermilion flow of sacrificed blood. And she looks upon Lilianne, and Lilianne turns and looks upon me. "This I have done for you," she weeps, dissolving in a river of blood, crumpling into a darkened sack of empty nothings.

And waking I know that Lilianne is dead.

Curiously I do not rush from her bedside knowing her deceased, and I kiss her brow and whisper that I shall not shake her awake, that I shall let her rest. I leave her cold body stretched over the bed, fumble for a tinder match and make a fire in the grate. Before the flames I sit for a short while, boiling a saucepan of water to make myself a strong coffee, and then I dress and look upon myself in the mirror. At length I can barely even conjure thought. It sickened me that someone could have done this thing, and I half-blamed myself for not insisting Lilianne take my money, stay with me. And then my thoughts were stilled and a blank nothing held my mind. It was not peace but it was a calmness that overcame me. Please do not think me cruel and without pity, it was just that I was unable to move. Only when a terrible pain, sharp as a blade twisted inside my head, an agony of the moment perhaps, did I gather myself together.

I looked upon Lilianne's beaten and broken corpse, at the ghastly tincture that coloured the body grey, reclined in final peace upon my pillow. The moon, chill and uncaring and slivered is a luminous intrusion that seeps between the flickering shadows. Lilianne's lips are slightly parted as if she were to awake and to breathe, but the voluptuous scarlet sheen has paled to the sickly hue of a bad fruit, the lower lip split by a crack all darkly stained with dried blood. Her pretty china-blue eyes are closed, rolled back into the sockets, seeing nothing now of this world and only the darkness of eternity in the next. Her naked body, contoured in surreal light and shadow, lies under the sheet unmoving; so I strike another match to a new candle which joins the subtle luminance of the moon and the glowing coals, lends her dignity in death, a strange beauty in her last graces. And when finally I do rise I cannot bring myself to touch the corpse again, nor cover the sheet over her face, instead I hobble to my little fireplace and poke at the ashes, make the coals crackle and stutter into staccato life again, throw on another log. The flames spark and leap, scarlet and azure, and luteous, and by their restless scintillation's the toys in the room become animate with a life of their own. They all appear to flicker as if alive and they whisper as if in prayer and then are silent. My tired mind has given them voices with which to mimic the angels, eyes, with which to shed tears of faceted crystal- compassion and mercy, sorrows and feeling. And as I think these silly things a wild inspiration is born within. An arrow cleaves the atmospheres, straight and true, its polished tip flaming deep into my brain. And while Lilianne slumbers in darkling night, silent in her death dreams, I wash the sleep from my face and straighten my clothes, snuff the candles and pull a coat across my shoulders.

He is seated high on his dais, surrounded by a spindled rail that elevates and divides his being from my own. His is an air of superiority apparent in every gesture. And I know from merely looking at this man that he dislikes me, dislikes everybody. The Sergeant of the Gendarme has been playing idly with his pen, hardly having taken the expenditure of energy to record a written word in the fat, black ledger on the podium before him. He scratches down what he considers relevant facts, and only these with hardly feigned disinterest.

"And did you not call the physician?" he asks with a very bored yawn.

"No, not I."

"Then you did not believe that Mademoiselle Broyer was in any danger of dying?"

"No, of course not!" I reply with shock.

"Then she was perfectly all right?"

"Sir, I did not say that."

"Monsieur Blot, a young woman is dead and she was last with you- in your rooms. Now, perhaps you might care to enlighten me further?"

"Your tone is offensive sir and I do not exactly like your suggestion. I said that I did not summon the doctor, but I had asked Monsieur le Guyot to fetch one as quickly as he might." The Sergeant raises his eyebrows in umbrage and studies me.

"You, of course, were occupied otherwise, in other affairs, with the whore." His tone is meant to cut me to the quick and he almost succeeds. With difficulty I quell the anger under my skin. He glances down and his thin lips twitch; he taps his nib against the glass of an open inkwell.

"Whore!" I shout at him, "Is that all you can say!"

"Please, Monsieur Blot, it is best that you attempt to retain your composure. Unless of course…"

He trails off leaving the end of his threat hanging above the abyss.

I shake violently, waving my cane up at him.

"You disgust me. A young woman has been beaten and murdered, how can you be so insensitive?"

He rests his pen in its niche, casts a threatening look upon me, appearing in his grimacing dictum like a stone wrought goblin perched upon the lip of the world. My fingers curl around the banister rail, my knuckles white.

"I am not here to give sympathy for every slut who is unfortunate enough to meet her demise while engaged in her disreputable proclivities. And if I were you, as you feel it is your need to defend her character, I should accept the circumstance and leave it for the police to decide what is best to do."

"You will do as little as possible," I retort, turning to leave, "of this I can be certain." The Gendarme grunts and suppresses a belch. And I add, "Not that I require the likes of you to insult me."

He closes his book. "Then I take it you are quite finished?"

I am incredulous. "Yes, surely I must be!"

And then a tiny light flickers in his black eyes, and he leans forward, his gaze narrowing and says, "Monsieur Blot, tell me, have we met before?"

I am stunned by the suggestion, wheel around and spit in his direction.

"If ever I knew you sir, it was through no fault of my own! And if ever the future should have our paths crossed, then a most unfortunate occurrence that should be!"

As I leave the police station I hear his mocking voice; "Some men will come by the Rue de la Chapelle to remove the body. Please make yourself available should you be required for further investigation."

At the door I pull myself up imposingly and shoot a look of malice directly to his eyes.

"You, Monsieur, are _le flic_."

"But of course," he returns casually, ending with impunity the slight issue of a prostitute's death.

Amid the clutter on the table is a box of chocolates and a poem I have composed. These are pretty words that speak of undying love and devotion. For Carmanio. The hours have slipped away unnoticed while I work silently in my chill loft, the log in the grate long since suspiring into lifeless cinders. A small pile of wood shavings has collected on the bench top where I work, thin as paper and forest scented; powdered dust sifts to the floor. And though my work keeps time at bay, the day is still somehow comfortless and unfriendly. I have decided to work and impress upon myself the virtue of such application and in this manner I can forget for the moment all that has gone before. By some wicked twist of fate things have shifted in time about me, and all so surreal. Still I am consumed by an unaccountable melancholy and try not to resign my heart to whispers of depression and unhappiness. I let my hands carve what they will, for I have not set out with any one particular purpose in mind and I reflect upon Lilianne's words, that I should make something special. This thought is what has staved off the desire to stop breathing, to lie down with the shadows and let the world pass. This thought has kept alight a flame burning within. A little block of rough-hewn oak and a chisel, and my mind and my mood improve and my creative soul does the rest.

Strange, how the depths of the bleak spirit can fire the spark of imagination. And in my leaden slump, shutting out the grim, grey world that surrounds me I work uninterrupted, and do not emerge from my room. No one comes to visit and no sound is heard to filter up from the depths of hell below. There is no Lilianne to knock on my door and no Etienne to point and to accuse. Solitary, I eat sparsely and drink absinth, sleep in the bower where Lilianne dreamed her last. And then, after the passing of three days my solemnity is broken.

Etienne raps at my portal.

"Monsieur Blot," he whispers hesitantly through the panel, "I must speak with you."

"Go away Etienne," my reply is so quiet he cannot possibly hear me and I don't care.

"Monsieur, I must see you. Let me in, please."

I open the door and look at him for a long moment in which he fidgets and whimpers but does not continue.

"Well?" I enquire impatiently, "What could be so important that you feel the need to bother me?"

"I came to speak with you..." Here then he clears his throat, so I gesture him in, and he is oddly subdued, hardly meeting my eye, standing in the half-light under the strung up canvas. "I did send for the physician you know, long before he came. I am deeply sorry Henri."

"Is this all you have come for?" I shake my head and sigh.

"Please Monsieur, I feel as if I owe you."

This little statement triggers a spark of disgust. "And for what reason would you owe me?"

"The monies you gave me for Mademoiselle Broyer's room...I have come to return them."

"Please go Etienne; you are beginning to make me ill."

"No, no, Monsieur, her death is not my fault."

"Yes, you justify yourself, and you keep the francs. Perhaps they may serve as a reminder of your good will."

"How can you blame me sir, I only wanted what was rightfully mine."

I gently push him from my room and he flusters and stammers and protests like a child that cannot understand its punishment.

"She is dead and now you must find another tenant. Perhaps you shall advertise and find the ideal person, or perhaps you might do worse than rooming a whore."

"You are cruel," he tells me, wiping a fleck of moisture from his thick lips.

"And you are not?"

"You fail to understand the principle of the matter…"

I close the door on him and silence follows Etienne down the stairs.

A little while afterward I find myself stifled and in need of air, and pulling on my coat I close the door on the room and its shadows, a box of bonbons wrapped in fiery scarlet under my arm.

Carmanio dances magnificently; but of course she always does, light as air, bright as starshine. Ivory and porcelain, midnight and raven's plumage. I am spellbound, and who would not be? There is no other in the world that can hold a light to my love, no other as gloriously beautiful, no other who has bound my heart in an unbreakable rapture. And tonight that rapture has flamed in my heart, the spark from a flint taking flame to burn fevered and passionate. For tonight, even as I sit applauding beyond the fall of the curtain, Carmanio's light step shall take her to her dressing room, and there the night will rain down comets from the sky to illume her private salon, to light the jewels in her eyes, to bathe the luteous pastel of her silken cheek. She will enter and the air will be scented with the dulcet odour of flowers but she will ignore these and seat herself upon the chair before her mirror. There she will look for a moment upon her own lovely reflection, see the stars captured in the glowing orbs of her eyes then with a tiny, tired sigh she will bend like the willow in a gentle breeze and begin unbinding the laces of her slippers. Her slim and delicate fingers will move to the clips that fasten her gown, the ribbons in her hair will fall loose to rest as silvered coils on her dresser. And there amid the bouquets of roses and carnations, of lilies and irises that all those foolish stage door admirers have left for her she will behold the ruby bow and the scarlet ribbon that bind the box of flames I have conjured. Her expression will be changed to one of wonder and she will reach forward and take up the perfumed sheet of tissue thin paper that I have written over in spidery copperplate, a love poem that honours her beauty.

_Accompanied_ _by_ _Angels_ _'ere I_ _sing_

_Enjoined_, _transported_ _high_ _above_ _the_ _world_

_Our_ _flight_ _is_ _to_ _the_ _Gods_ _whose_ _dreaming_ _slumbers_

_Stir_ _amid_ _the_ _scents_ _of_ _midnight_ _flowers_

_And_ _all_ _is_ _tranquil_

_No_ _darkness_, _no_ _shadows_

_And I_ _am_ _enraptured_.

_Here_ _in_ _this_ _solitude_, _gilded_, _vaulted_

_Splendid_ _are_ _the_ _climes_

_Bright_, _brighter_ _than_ _the_ _Sun_

_Hecate_ _listens_ _and_ _wonders_

_And_ _even_ _she_ _is_ _captured_ _by_ _our_ _sonnet_

_By_ _the_ _song_ _of_ _the_ _wind_ _romanced_

_Together_, _you_ _and I in_ _peaceful_ _hours_ _love_

_And_ _all_ _is_ _happiness_

_No_ _darkness_, _no_ _shadows_

_And_ _we_ _are_ _enraptured._

And having read this declaration of my love, Carmanio will smile and think to her in wonder that her admirer is and perhaps that true love does indeed await her, pull the bow, slip the ribbon, take back the lid, and open the box. And exclaim:

"Oh, how beautiful!"

Her alabaster hand will waver like a hesitant dove above the confection, her fingers not knowing which crème centre to choose. And she will think to herself, "Who are you, mysterious lover, to send me such delicacies?" Then her selection final, the velvet sweet will pass between her red, red lips and she will sigh with contentment. And she will wonder.

Carmanio will read and re-read the poetry, her tongue will sound each syllable over and over till, when she slumbers, her dreams will conjure my image all wrought in gold and gilded light astride a strong steed. And in her dreams I will come for her and sit her beside me and we will kiss and our love shall be known throughout the land.

Thus accomplished, and with high spirits soaring among the angels, my heart filled with their song unending, I return to my humble lodgings, oblivious to the world and its dangers and its shadows, an untarnished glory in my soul. And now in my life is the seed of the flower and the flower is the blossom of love and adoration. And my love for Carmanio transcends all earthly bounds.

At this point I must confess something of the callous in my attitude, for even though I did not leave my room for three days, even though the moon mocked me with an ever widening, cruel, cruel smile, I have little occasion to let my thoughts dwell upon Lilianne. Etienne would have called me hypocrite- I would have called him worse, names scooped up out of the gutter. Perhaps I have distanced myself out of reaction, telling myself that I could not possess an attachment for her, the gulf, which separated us being far too wide. Or perhaps it is more to the truth that she was not the idealised love object, but a prostitute, sullied somehow and irrevocably damaged. A terrible thing to think but I stand guilty. So I must fish up my heart from this festering Well of Souls and tell that heart that which it desires the most is still within reach, forget about the ghosts of the past, they are gone. I shall have none other save Carmanio. I shall hold the dancer's hand, encircle it with a golden band, kiss that palm tenderly and vow my all-consuming love.

_From the shadows I am tracking her, keeping a dark eye upon the white fire of her dress. She walks with slow steps, a moving, niveous flare in the darkness. For a tense moment she stops, as if sensing a presence close by, my presence. Quickly I fold myself into the shadows, become as one invisible. In her pause she turns with a little flick of her head as if she may have heard something; a stone kicked underfoot, a twig snapping. Stillness is all that comes to her ear and no dark vision evolves within her eye. After the longest heartbeat she moves off again, while above us the moon illuminates the path. Past the dim light of the gas jets she passes through a giant iron gate, its pointed spears like lethal teeth smiling into the darkness. Filled with a strange, tingling excitement I follow_ _her, my heart racing. She has brought me to a Vale of Tears. A gentle breeze shakes the swan's plume in her bonnet, rippling the lace at her breast. I hear the call of a night bird as she picks up her skirts, her shoes crunching over bracken. She descends a dozen terraces, stepping around tilted headstones, fallen cherubim and broken spires to enter upon a stage of pitch. There, in the splintered moonlight, under the watchful eye of a Seraph, she turns full circle and whispers aloud, "I am here!" All about her the crumbling tombs echo her voice as I cling to the darkness, but a few short meters away from where she stands. Then a coin strikes against marble, a golden flash in the surreal light, rolling until it finds a chink in the stone and disappears. She is reaching down to pry the coin free when his bulk erupts from the shadows, his large frame engulfing hers in a sordid embrace. "I didn't think you were coming!" he spits gruffly, quick fingers tugging at her laces. "I didn't mean to be late!" A frisson passes into my flesh as she pulls the pins from her bonnet and drops it to the ground. "I don't like to wait," he growls, slapping her abruptly. "I am unhappy when I have to wait." _

_She responds to his fervour with a reckless solicitude that seems almost thirsty for violence and, when she breaks off the kiss, a speck of blood is glistening on her lower lip. Then the moon falls full upon her to illuminate the fair face of my Carmanio! Hovering close to delirium as I watch this passionate scene, I reach my hand beneath my belt. Carmanio strips in the shadows, sacrificing her silken skirts to the darkness and the man peels away the folds of his own filthy garments as my hand finds the shaft of my sex. I watch him push her head to his crotch, gripping her and jerking, demanding that she suck, till finally a thin ribbon of fluid escapes from her red, red lips. A chorus of insects begin to sing a discordant melody as he forces her to lie upon the cold stone of a tomb, mounting her, spreading her, entering her pale body. I watch and I tremble and his groans are sounds like cannon fire all co-mingled with her wanton responses. Yet you see I am that man. It is my body desecrating Carmanio! The moon eventually becomes the sun as my flesh melds with the rigid tassel and fractured rosettes of the tomb. I hear a banging noise, a far away screeching that sounds, to my ear, like nails being pried from a coffin and then total and utter silence closes off my senses and I know nothing more._

The ballet is a much-needed diversion for the mind. I cannot imprison my soul in this crumbling loft forever. As the music drifts from the orchestra pit I am engulfed by a rush of feeling that sets my heart to tremor with tiny butterflies beating frantic wings within me. And the music is almost ethereal, the sigh of seraphim, a harmony that enraptures and mystifies, possesses and consumes. All and everything that has ever existed in God's creation is swept aside; the dancers who slip from the eaves, the muted audience who await the spectacle, all is pulled into the void of black space, forgotten. For there is only Carmanio. And she my one object of desire. And my love is a sweet agony, there where the heart is poised in longing, expectation; such is the mad compulsion, which bids me leap upon the stage and fall in at her feet. It is all I can think of, all that I wish for. Hail, all hail! See the hero comes, the gallant cavalier, flashing the sun and the moon and the stars in his eyes. And he with eyes for no other. See her sweep and turn, a sylph in the gentle winds of romance, see the winds stir and lift the leaf, dance it through the tallest of treetops and then waft it softly back to earth. And now the chorus is plunged into darkness, all of them shadowed in the blink of an eye, all but Carmanio. And it is she who is the Queen of Night, the spark and the fire that leaps frenzied in the crystal, the finely lustred polish of the midnight stone, the vivid garnet splash that is the cloven pomegranate. I am indeed obsessed. When the dance ceases she is a column of white plumed mist, wavering and shimmering and weaving even though she does not move; and her figure is all curved and more beautiful than that of the Goddess of the Morning Star, more lovely and more graceful than Ophelia amid her drowning flowers. Is it that Carmanio can only exist in dream? In her tresses are braided the cream droplets of pearls; and that hair with its ebon fire frames her exquisite visage as if it were a crown wrought from the dark vault empyrean, all ablaze with the life of some eternal flame. Beneath the translucent film of her dress I can see the pale tincture of roses, the swell of small, apple-shaped breasts, which press against the layers of tulle as she reaches upward to claim the stars. Her calf muscles are beautifully sculptured, tense in perfect symmetry as she takes her bow while the audience applauds and cheers, a rain of flowers descending on the stage.

"Love me." It is the whisper of my own voice. Has she read love's declaration, is she even a little enticed? If she could know me now, look beyond the light in the false skies burning, would she love me as I love her? Is there any hoping for the beggar in love, and can one such as she ever reciprocate the adoration of a cripple? And what is hope?

Unbidden, Lilianne enters from the darker places that are not. She is bright like a new coin, haloed and without shadows. She is a fragile yellow flower by contrast with Carmanio's tenebrous beauty. And I see her eyes awash with tears of glass, and I reach into the void to take her up into my arms, embrace her and comfort her, for she is cold and alone and knows not joy. So I step forward and I take her hand, Carmanio has disappeared with the drop of the curtain, Lilianne looks after her. I gather Lilianne to my breast, feeling inhumane in my neglect, and I kiss her and tell her everything that is pain and disillusion shall pass. And I lay down by her side and press my lips upon hers, poor, sweet, sweet Lilianne whom no man loves, take her chill hand in my hand, let my wild heart beat against her still breast. I am sorry Lilianne, so very sorry I could not love you, as you deserved. I find my eyes are all awash with tears; hopelessness and sorrows stab at my heart. And I find these women, these phantoms that dance and mourn are not merely visions that I have bound with chains; no they are parts of my soul. And then the night calls me home from wandering, calls me down to the arms of sleep; and I embrace the solace and comfort of promised dreams, sadness and joy as one emotion poured into the chalice of my soul. And I am oddly contented.

It is as elegant as anything I have ever made, the tiny dancer carved from oak, smoothed and polished, finely chiselled and delicate. Not more than five centimetres tall, it is the perfect replica of Carmanio; a miniature that steps light, one-knee slightly bent, arms raised, fingertips just touching above the braided hair. She dances amid a bed of flowers. In my wildest dreams I did not ever think that I, man of nothing, might hold within my hands the power of such creation. And I take the tiny dancer and I lay her in a box with a silken lining, and beside her there is another figure, perhaps a little larger, perhaps somewhat less detailed. A soldier cast in Metal d'Alger. What will she think when she opens the box to behold the vision of herself and a lead soldier? What thoughts will tumble inside her mind as she contemplates the dancer's beauty, and the soldier's one-legged stance? For you see, indeed the toy soldier has but one leg; and is it not strange how fate will play the same circumstance, but dance the music in different shoes. I had not enough alloy to fill the mould.

I have purchased another tray of crème-cantered chocolates; these I have wrapped with a black and silver ribbon. No flaming reds this time. Now it is the eve and the colours of the night, the ebon tones of things possible only in shadows, under the light of that blossoming moon. A silver bow adorns the package, an argent rose of cold, cold fire; and I see Carmanio in the night world of the Theatre des Anges, dancing without end 'neath that moon in the deep, painted garden. And the night is Plutonian and promises tainted pleasures to thrill me, burn up the shadows with the ardent flame of my love. The silver bow scintillates, proudly proclaiming my success, my happiness, and the kiss of morning sparks thereon as if to congratulate and commend. If the night should paint my lips with cinders, then the day must wash those ashes away. There is happiness new to my soul, a feeling of light that swells within, a pleasure and a joy that I have not known before. Vague dreams are near their reality. Even one such as I can be loved. Of this I am certain.

I have finished packing a great trunk with as many toys as will fit within, tightly placed amid the straw so that they should not break. Despite all the labour and the finer touches of detail that my craft lends these things of wood and clay, I find my heart easily manipulated and have not asked money for this assignment. I must call upon Etienne to assist me down to the rez-de-chaussee, for the chest is elongated and too heavy for a man with one leg to carry. This morning finds my landlord in a disturbed quietude. Is he still brooding over yesterday? I do not care.

"Etienne, are you not feeling the best?" I ask slyly, secretly enjoying his obvious discomfort.

"No Monsieur." Silence as he enters my room and we stoop to take hold of the rope handles at either end.

"Well?"

"Well what?" he asks as if I were interrupting a reverie.

"What is bothering you?"

He says nothing once more, and just as I am about to try a different approach, he says looking at me in earnest. "This orphanage, the Sisters of The Light, how long shall you be gone?"

"Why?" I ask, for I get the impression that all is not quite as it should be. "Is there a problem of which I should be aware?"

"Of course not, it's just that..." and he trails off annoyingly and does not finish his sentence as we reach the first landing and the rickety banister rail.

"If you are worried that I am not to be selling enough to cover your expenses, I should be a little more than unhappy, Etienne. These gifts are for poor children, why should I ask money? I'm certain you haven't a decent bone in your body."

"You could sell much more than you do," he replies with a grunt, taking the steps slowly, he descending first, me hobbling in the rear.

"Do you really think so?" I return sarcastically, "And you my financial advisor, who would have thought!"

Etienne ignores my remark completely. "You have a wonderful talent Monsieur Blot, perhaps you need to exploit it, rather than waste it on charity."

"Charity, tell me about that, Etienne. And do you ever think of anything other than money?"

He returns a grudging silence and looks at me with a glare of disgust, knowing full well that to continue in this vein may result in disagreement.

"Pardon Monsieur if I sound shallow, I merely believe that you are worth far more than you seem to think."

"Flatterer!" I snort; stumbling in my step, peg leg buckling as the trunk bumps into the wall. Etienne sneers. "You need lodgings on the lower floor." I do not pass a comment. Here we arrive at the second floor and pass the door that was Lilianne's. A shadow of guilt crosses his face and a little quiver twitches over his lips.

"Terrible," he mutters from the corners of those lips, so hushed that I scarcely hear him.

"Pardon?" I ask, not sure of his meaning, "Terrible how she died? You of all people should think so! Obviously Lilianne was not one of those people of worth, why else should you care?"

His clumsy feet have found the steps leading down to the ground floor, the rail sways, the timber groans, but he says nothing more.

"Don't tell me, you are riddled with guilt?" I lay aside my venom when he fails to react, am beside myself with curiosity, and he is being so mysterious that I tire of the dialogue. "I need to play a guessing game. Is that it?"

"It is good to see that you find your amusements so very easily Monsieur," he retorts, "But no, indeed, despite your humour there has been a dreadful occurrence."

"Indeed, pray tell, what ghastly news vexes you so, considering the kindness you showed the other evening?"

We arrive in the entry hall and set down our burden, Etienne looks at me and I see there is a peculiar uncertainty flickering in those brown, porcine eyes.

"It _is_ about Mademoiselle Broyer," he whispers, almost as if he finds it difficult to speak her name. Anticipation hovers between us. "It is in the Gazette...Mademoiselle Broyer..." he stammers and does not finish.

"Well?"

"Perhaps you might read for yourself," is his reply, waving me into the kitchen.

As I enter the kitchen there sits a motley collection of tenants gathered around the table, and a pall of oppression falls over me. They are all whispering at once among themselves and hardly notice my entry. A sinking feeling begins to drag at my insides, and I long for the arrival of my equipage. I wish for one insane moment to flee, but I have to know what the mystery is, and why Lilianne, dead for almost a week, dead and buried is the subject of a breakfast conversation.

"Troublant!" says a faceless face that I have never seen before. Etienne agrees and begins preparing breakfast, a greasy arrangement of spiced sausage and fried bread, very black and bitter coffee, stale croissants, his wife rolls out pastry on a bench under a grimy window.

Offers another faceless face: "Je ne vais pas a ce cimetiere a nuit!"

And suddenly the kitchen alters and is full of dark places and shadows, and there is nowhere to run to, nowhere to retreat but into the labyrinth of the mind and I blink only to find I am seated in a cast-iron chair at a sidewalk cafe sharing croissants with Lilianne, her last breakfast. She smiles and I am awed by the brilliant blue sparkle of her eyes, by the bell-like tinkle of her laugh. She seems strangely happy. There is a flurry of doves, silver-grey wings beat the air in slowed down motion, time alters and her soul is winging its way above the clouds, leaving the world behind. A rose of shaved wood with a broken stem lies at my feet and I can smell its perfume. Abruptly I feel quite sick, my stomach turning over and I cannot eat Etienne's breakfast even if I had wanted to. I reach across the table with a trembling hand and pick up the newspaper that a phantom has left open at the appropriate page, and I read the dreaded article, which has had the entire house gossiping. Etienne casts me a puzzled glance as I fold the print under my arm and throw a handful of coins on the table. "For my board," I say, turning my head so that he cannot see my eyes, leaving the oppressive kitchen and its company of equally oppressive strangers. I feel their eyes bore into my back as I exit, but they are stupid, uncaring fools and I am glad to be without them. What is it I hear muttered, a broken observation spoken in a riddle by Etienne's good wife?

"_Il n'arrive peut-être pas d'évènements inutiles…" _

All tongues in the room are abruptly stilled.

Once again I hobble up to my room, and it is on the steps that I see Lilianne's door key, bloodstained and gleaming dully, wedged in near a support rail, lost, forgotten. For one horrible moment my mind's eye is filled with the image of Lilianne all battered and bruised and slipping into the river of night's dreaming. Quickly I retrieve it and thrust it into my pocket. In my studio I throw the cursed newspaper onto the table where a prepared list of needed goods, paints, brushes and casting lead, clay and selected timbers lies folded under a stone. For some time I sit at the table and stare into space, unable to think of anything but Lilianne's death and not knowing if I could even shed a tear for her passing. It seemed cruel to think this but it was only the truth of the moment for Carmanio now filled every corner of my heart with the vision of her beauty; Lilianne was quickly fading into a memory. A terrible guilt assails me and I berate my soul; it will do no good, I tell myself, to brood on such things. There was nothing I could have done, no way to change the course of destiny. No way that I could have prevented Lilianne's death. Then breaking my reverie I take a clean sheet of paper and dip my quill and I compose these lines:

_I am not so blind_

_That I do not see_

_My whole life poised upon the lip of eternity_

_That dreadful gulf from which no light may shine_

_In whose darkness_

_Shall we meet-_

_Yours or mine?_

_You are not such a fool_

_That you cannot know_

_One smile would lighten e're the deepest shadow_

_One kiss would bind me to your heart divine_

_ And yet_

_ In whose darkness_

_ Would we meet-_

_ Yours or mine? _

_For is not the world_

_ Composed of baser things?_

_Muted, our tongues sing not the song the Seraph sings_

_Words will see us bound by thorn and vine_

_ And in whose darkness_

_ Could we meet-_

_ Yours or mine?_

Once finished I blot away the wet ink, fold the paper neatly with a perfectly sharp razor crease and attach it with a silver ribbon to the shadow box of chocolates. "Please love me my dearest Carmanio," my spirit sighs, "For I love none other than you." And I crumple my list into a pocket and I take up the chocolates and the silk lined box in which lie the ballerina and the one-legged soldier and I return downstairs. Etienne is standing by the door, having already loaded my trunk onto the rented equipage, its brown mare impatient to begin.

"Monsieur Blot, please not to distress yourself over Mademoiselle Broyer, I know what you must be feeling." Etienne is all apologies and untruths.

"Do you?" I ask numbly, "Perhaps not."

The concierge is wiping his greasy fingers on a soiled apron, his dialogue-changing course in a hope of making me feel less depressed. "Just think of those happy little children..."

All my energy seems to have been drained, lethargy and indifference entering my heart. And it is difficult to understand why the depression and why the suffering of fools. I climb up into the carriage and the driver lightly cracks the whip and we start on our way, my landlord and his crumbling house left behind, diminished. I go by the Theatre Des Anges, the Rue de la Chapelle eventually engulfed and forgotten. On the rotunda side of the opera I set down to deliver the sweets and the toy dancer to my beloved Carmanio. I could not enter backstage and Carmanio would not be there, so tipping a maid with a few gold francs, I give profound instructions, which, with wide eyes, she is only too pleased to comply. What will Carmanio think this time; will she consent to a meeting soon with he who loves her most? Ah, the suspense, the mystery. What fantasies about this enigmatic lover tumble her thoughts? Just as my own of her do now?

And now, with spirits heightened I close my eye over the kaleidoscope of the city, leave behind the sooty monster that belches fumes and dispenses sudden death and tragedy. And the world alters imperceptibly with colour and clean air and for the moment even Lilianne is forgotten. The gentle rocking of the carriage almost lulls me down to a traveller's sleep and in the back of my mind it creeps in to chill me, a tale in typeset splashed all over the morning gazette. A blade of horror passes through me, but I push it back into the darkness and look to the sun shining in the blue sky above. "Such evil man is capable of," I mutter, "But all beautiful things are tainted by corruption."

Captain Leroux twists his moustache and looks up at the day shifting into grey watercolour outside the window. He scratches his chin and clears his throat, shifting in his chair, leaning slightly on the table.

"Monsieur Blot," he begins, choosing his words slowly, carefully, "Perhaps there is more we need to discuss?" His blue eyes glitter, but he does not smile, and I look down and see his handsome face reflected in the surface of a cup of tepid coffee. With distaste I push the brew away and the image ripples and vanishes.

"And what may they be?" I ask in return; casting my glance upward to meet his, look him squarely in the eye. "Nothing that I have not told your Sergeant."

"Let me be clear about one thing," he says through perfectly straight, white teeth; "We are not here for your amusement. There is to be a denouement and it shall be from your lips. My Sergeant recognised you Monsieur; you were a Government soldier. Discharged. Is this not so?"

His voice is low and deep, almost musical and yet threatening. But I am not intimidated by his demeanour. The iron tongue of a tower clock rings out with a muffled clang, so I count the notes in air, six in all, before I open my lips to speak.

"Obviously you are well informed Captain Leroux, so it is no secret that I need hide. Perhaps you might tell me something," I state calmly, guarding my words though feeling a rope tightening about my neck, "What is in the box?"

He lifts the box onto the table and opens the lid, slyly peering over the lip, purposefully hiding the contents, wringing out the suspense. "In here, Monsieur Blot, are some items that have a tale to tell. Indeed you can enlighten us, no?"

And I watch as he takes a tiny dancer from the box and a toy tin soldier with one leg, stands them side by side just out of reach. My eyes do not even flicker. The day outside is bleeding to death, the chamber in which we sit takes on a surreal glow, the gas jets flutter and come to life under a match. The Captain of the Gendarme returns my gaze unflinching.

"Ring any bells?" he asks, cool, calculating, unmoved.

"But of course," I reply, "Indeed they do."

The carved oak ballerina gleams under the soupy yellow light, the toy soldier dull by contrast; Captain Leroux of the Gendarme settles back in his chair with his hands neatly folded on his lap. Silence breathes in attendance. And holding his gaze, but not really seeing him at all I begin an account of a terrible deed, one destined for redemption cast by my own hand.

I had not intended to kill Hugo, believe me when I tell you this. I did not know him, at least not immediately, did not recall his hideous face and what he had done. That was of course until he opened his polluted mouth, and by doing so condemned himself.

I returned from the provinces at the close of the day; a tired sun weakly illumed the low sky, purple clouds tinged with vermilion and saffron. It is almost as if the sun as it retires has given its final spectacle over for my eyes alone. Its last fading beams wash honey and blood over the roofs and spires and carved stonework of the Theatre des Anges. My heart is aflutter, beating with the wings of a white dove, and it sings a song to hope and to love, for on this evening, despite the fatigue of my long journey, I have decided to seek an audience with my beloved Carmanio.

I sit in the stalls to see her as she dances; a faceless shade there in a gathering of lost souls; and the curtain is lifted and the chorus enters into that painted garden with its ivy wreathed columns, its cherubim decorated fountains, its midnight flowers 'neath a midnight moon.

Out they step and fan, unfolding to divide the darkness, two white lines in perfect symmetry, swirling snowflakes and gliding swans. The music is thin and rises gently from the orchestra pit, but even as I listen and even as I watch I am aware of a movement dark and ominous in the dance. The dying wail of the strings gives over to the deeper undulations of the double bass, and these in turn are emphasised by the brooding thunder of the timpani. And as it beats it becomes synchronised with my heartbeat, and the truth is a bolt of lightning that dissevers my thoughts and my surrounds. It dislodges a stone and forces it into the pit of my stomach; it brings into my soul an unwanted anguish, 'mauvais quart d'heure.' My mind is troubled and it compels me to rise, and not even realising that I have risen, I push my way through the stalls, my cane rapping knees and shins; a volley of protests are hurled at my back, sharp words, curses.

Into the darker wings of the Theatre I take myself, and nobody follows. I know what it is that I do, I know whom it is that I seek. A short narrow brick passage echoes hollowly with the clatter of my wooden leg and my walking cane, and my shadow is thrown up those white-washed bricks like a demon inching from the mouth of Hell. The passage abruptly spills into a massive room from which corridors trail off to the left. And there are people running all about, swirls of colour and great props shifting. It is a phantasmagoria of living, agitated dreams. They are hauled to the ceiling, faceless phantoms, pulled up on thick hemp ropes, up to the rafters to rearrange the stars; and others flap and ripple in filmy gauze close to my cheek, or meld with painted screens and backdrops. Oddly I am unmolested as I wander through and among these wonders, nobody asks me who I am; nobody arrests me with silly questions. I reel off to the left, hobbling as fast as my bum leg will allow, and I am rewarded, for I see her waiting for me, looking to me.

"Monsieur," she says, her eyes travelling over me, quickly recognising me, and blushing. "Nobody is permitted back-stage. You must leave."

I look at her and for a little minute I seem unable to speak, and in my hesitation she calls out something across my shoulder. And then I see it at her back, a door and on the door a name that begs me enter, enter. And I knew that I should never set foot over that threshold, even as much as my desire overwhelmed me. I lurch forward and the woman takes hold of my arm, she is stressing the fact that I cannot enter that door.

"Did you tell her? Did you give it to her?"

The maid bites down on her lower lip and bars the doorframe with her arms, and there is a strange look in her face, one of confusion, of fear even.

"Well?" I implore her, attempting to push her aside. It is then that strong hands clasp me and I am dragged by two burly fools to a back-street exit, kicking even as they throw me into the gutter.

"Where is Carmanio?" I scream like an idiot, like a fool, like a child. They look at me and spit. "Gone from here," says one. "And not due back!" calls the other. And they share a secret shrug and slam the door.

For some empty minutes I sit in the dark and the filth of the back-stage alley feeling confused and cheated. And without Carmanio. A mangy cat watches me warily from the shadows; its green eyes flickering like fiery jewels. Angrily I throw a stone and the cat becomes like the night. And I am indeed alone.

Of course it seems that Fate has dealt me a dreadful blow. First it takes Lilianne and gives her over to the cold, cold grave; and now I am without Carmanio- as if she were ever mine. I never held her, never kissed her. And she is gone. Worse, I never had the chance to offer my love, to give wholly of my devotions and myself. I rage then, angered at the world, crying out a tirade of all my despairs. Why is it that nothing is ever mine? And so you see, I stood shakily and gathered myself up and I found a tavern wherein to drown my sorrows. And then Fate gave me Hugo.

I should no sooner have sought Hugo's company than attempt to swim in the Seine with a stone tied to my leg. But it is peculiar how circumstance plays its cards, and it is not for me to question Destiny. His intention is to rob me; it is obvious from his shifty demeanour, sliding up to my table like a diseased worm, scratching at his hands, which are in an advanced state of trombiculasis. His eyes glow as they alight on the pile of coins I have dropped onto my table and he smiles at me and offers his person in questionable friendship. I look at him in disgust, and somehow he seems oddly familiar. And then by way of a joke I ask him to join me in a drink. He cannot believe his good fortune, nor my generosity, pulls up a chair and plants himself, calling me friend and comrade as if he has known me all his life. Yet perhaps I have known him before, his is a visage that my brain is struggling to remember.

Says he through the shards of yellowed, broken teeth, "One leg, hah, how'd you lose the other?"

So much for tact, but I cannot give him the credit of intelligence.

"I was a soldier," I tell him, "You know, conscripted to clean up the merde of the Third Republic."

He cackles at this sarcasm and takes a swig at a half-empty glass on the table. "Idiots," is the only word he utters with regards to that, and even that word is gargled through the fire of cheap brandy. Then in a feeble attempt at humour he asks me if I shot my own leg off.

"Like your mouth?" I return, and he does not know if he should take the remark in the spirit of fun or as the insult of its intention. He decides upon the former and pours himself another drink from my bottle.

He slaps me on the shoulder and cackles, a jet of spittle flecking my cheek, and even though he is disgusting I am joined to him by fate. And he snakes his crawling, grubby fingers down into my pocket, thinking that I am unaware of his thieving intentions. I laugh and reflex jerks my hand up to grasp his wrist, push his dirty, mite infested hand back, wave a finger before his face and smile. He stinks of the most offensive body odour, and suddenly I find him depressing. Foolish to have given him license over my good nature.

"No, no, my friend, you wouldn't rob me." I watch him as he stands drunkenly, pitching sidelong out his chair, almost overturning it. And I quickly snatch up my glass and the bottle of cognac; his drink goes spinning across the table to shatter into lethal pieces on the floor. Hugo cannot stop laughing, as if that were the funniest thing he has ever seen- for to him the world is nothing, as is this dingy tavern, nothing, and he not giving a damn or a care.

"What are you called?" I ask him, not intending the least bit of interest, but for some bizarre reason I am unable to will myself to be quit of him.

"Hugo," he ejaculates; spraying saliva in my face, clapping a wretched palm to my back with such force that I'm certain my spine will snap. "Like Victor. Graces upon my mother to name me after such a one as he!"

I nod and propose a toast to the woman.

"Dear mother," he drools, "a drink in your honour." And he refills my glass, sloshing more liquid onto the table than into the tumbler, raises the bottle to his lips and takes a swig. "I was in the army too," he confides, befouling the air with his breath. "Saw lots of terrible things."

"True," I reply, pushing back just enough so as not to suck his poisoned vapours into my lungs. "A soldier's life is a hard life."

And Hugo laughs till he coughs and he coughs till he chokes and turns purple. When he is done he pokes my shoulder with a bony finger. "I wasn't a soldier," he confesses, and begins another bout of cackling laughter.

Rapidly I look back over the years of my service, trying to fix his vile countenance in my mind, but without success. He reads my silence and lack of expression no doubt as melancholy.

"You are unhappy, no?"

"How very observant of you Hugo," I reply, God forbid that I should tell him why.

Says he in a sly tone, "I know what'll make you feel better."

"Oh," I ask, "And what could that possibly be?" And I know only too well that he is going to suggest a coupling with a pox infested gutter slut. One of his regulars no less. He scratches at his itching skin and leers at me, passes more spittle down the neck of the bottle.

"A good fucking of course!" he shouts emphatically, followed by another bout of good cheer and backslapping. He is well near drunk by now, embracing me and pushing his fevered lips closer to my ear.

"I hope not with you," I exclaim, pushing him back and wiping my cheek.

"Whatever takes your fancy," he says, "As long as you pay."

And he roars at this, stretching his pox-scarred face into a cracked, dirty mask which abruptly turns florid, and I am ready to leap back should he vomit. He breaks into another ghastly cough, spits mucus onto the floor and reaches once more for the cognac. I tell myself to leave this place, have done with this foul decrepitation, yet still I linger, still I procrastinate. I call the innkeeper over to my table and order another bottle of brandy.

"You're too good to me," says Hugo, finishing what remains in the bottle before us. "You know of course," he continues, "You will have to pay."

A moment elapses in which my mind seems lost; I can attach no relevance at all to any of his dialogue, for I see nothing but a fool. And soon a dead fool.

"If it's worth it I'll pay." God forbid that I should share a whore with Hugo! And he is close to my ear once again whispering covertly of a deed that turns my stomach.

"A few night's back I had the best ever!" he boasts.

"Oh, really," I find it is almost beyond my endurance to sit and listen. His breath is foul and so is his bragging.

"Oh, really!" he mimics, his gestures a hopeless parody of my own, "You like the boys, so you wouldn't know."

I lightly jest, simmering with a growing anger.

Says Hugo; "She took it in every hole, little bitch. And then she begged me for more."

"And no doubt you were up to satisfying her every requirement?"

"There was no satisfying that harlot once she got going. She needed a little touch up though, just to show her who's the boss, a little slapping around to loosen her up a bit. A man shouldn't have to ask a whore to eat his cock, it just isn't right!"

The innkeeper returns with the fresh bottle, scoops up a handful of coins and grunts his disgust. A cold ichor is crawling through my veins, and a sick intuition of what will come next.

"And what was she like, Hugo. What did she look like?"

"Oh, a fine one she was," he splutters, and another drink splashes into his glass, "But not so fine that she wouldn't take my meat into her ass. I told her that the first time you know, true as I sit here! Next time, I says to her, you swallow that!"

"And did she?"

"Oh yes my friend, that and much more."

I am becoming agitated, "Get on with it," I mutter under my breath, but he hasn't heard.

Continues Hugo, "She _was_ very pretty," and he places a ghastly emphasis on the word 'was'. "I'd had my eye on her, seen her about. Ha! The little tart had knocked me back a couple of times, but then a few shiny coins always changes their tune! But I didn't forget she thought me not good enough to fuck her…well, I showed her!"

I almost leap across the table and strike him between the eyes, but I stay my hand and coolly remark, "Tell me what you did to her. It excites me."

"Like a good tale do you?"

I nod and snigger. Hugo guffaws his approval.

"First I tore off her dress, that's what I did, so shiny and yellow and soft just like her. Too nice for a street wench to be wearing. I ripped it nice and slow and she just loved it, and then I bent her over and gave it to her like she was a dog. I could have done her all night like that, but a man wants more, you know…any man wants more!"

"And what is that, Hugo, tell me what does a man want?"

"I wanted her lips around my stiff, red dick. I wanted her to suck her own shit! Make her pay for being so snotty."

Murder flashes in my eyes and I am almost beyond the point of tolerance. So I look away from him and my knuckles turn white around my cane. I am sitting in company with Lilianne's murderer. And looking back at him I manage a depraved smile and I say, "And did she do it?"

And Hugo's hand is massaging the bulge at the front of his trousers. "Of course she did. I made her!" So he proceeds to tell how he beat and assaulted this girl and how he left her to die in some dark, forgotten alley. Who cares about a street prostitute anyway? I agree whole-heartedly and he refills his glass, laughing at his own clumsiness, calling loudly for me to join him in another drink. I decline.

"You still haven't told me how you lost your leg."

"And you haven't told me what you did in the army."

"Tit for tat," Hugo jokes, "I'll tell you if you tell me."

"Oh, I shall, I shall," I reply, and then, "Perhaps, my good fellow, I'll tell the tale if you care to join me in a bottle or two. Come with me, there is indeed much to discuss."

"Do we find ourselves a whore?" he asks, and I shudder with compressed rage. "Or are you thinking of just you and me?"

"Shh," I insist, "let's get out of this place. We can talk in my rooms."

Hugo stumbles to his feet and loops his arm around my waist, his foul breath and smallpox scarred face pushed into mine making it very difficult indeed for me to walk beside him. At the counter I purchase a bottle of brandy, and with my lowly companion dragging at me, I hobble into the street. We climb up into the box of my rented carriage and I take the reins, having dismissed the driver upon my return and somehow, in my angered state I manage to navigate the gaudy shadows unmolested, eventually arriving at the Rue de la Chapelle and the crumbling façade of the house where I live. Hugo is singing loudly, so I clap my hand over his foul mouth and bid him be quiet, we must not awaken the landlord, Monsieur le Guyot.

"Come Hugo, assist me."

Hopping to the cobbles I get him to help me in taking down my trunk, and clumsily we mount the stairs making enough noise to wake the dead, yet Etienne does not come to investigate, no light seeps from beneath his cowardly door. Upward into destiny we climb, ever upward, ascending the steps of the nightmare into the truth of eternal darkness.

My heart aches for Carmanio. And so many things can happen in such a short space in time. And is life not the shortest and fate the strangest of all things in life? Captain Leroux, you look at me with such disdain, but how could you know the slightest pleasures or the most profound agonies that life is filled with? You have experienced very little. And you have known no love such as mine. Ha! You shake your head and are incredulous. Don't be, for I speak from the heart. But I wander from my tale and must return.

What I did to Hugo might seem hypocritical in the light of what follows, but you see my good Captain, Hugo was scum and deserved to die. You say nothing. Do not pass judgment. Still, in your heart you agree with me, I know you do.

In the shifting darknesses of my studio we stand, Hugo and me. And Hugo peers into the shadows unable to perceive much by way of detail in his surroundings. I instruct him to be still, for I do not wish him to blunder in his inebriated state and crash into the toys. And I strike up a flint and soon a fire comes to life in the grate. I can see his stunned wonder, as the toys became visible, surreal and almost animate in the glow of the flames. Hugo's crafty eyes sparkle in their half-drunk delirium, flash and regain perhaps a sense of childish wonder. From a box of tinder I take a match and light a lamp, its blackened wick magically turning into orange fire; and I set the lamp down on the table beside the newspaper, taking note that the printed word seems to mean nothing to Hugo. The light washes over the type, 'Discovery of a Defiled Corpse in St. Ouen.' What a shame that he cannot read.

"What is this place?" he asks, believing he has stumbled into the land of the Fairy King, for indeed all must appear as saturnalia, magic and diversion.

"This is my studio, my friend," I tell him, picking up the lamp and taking him gently by the elbow, sidestepping books scattered on the floor, steering him through the fabled wonderland that surrounds him. "Be careful, we must not break anything. We don't want Etienne up from below, and we don't want to injure ourselves, do we?"

"And who is Etienne?"

"My concierge."

"Damn him!"

Hugo's lips curl slightly, but it is only momentary, for his mind is captured by the visions that waver in the lamplight around him. He is lost.

"Where does all this come from?" The glamour works its magics on him, and I see greed and a covetous hunger painting excited lines in his visage.

"Why Hugo, I made them," raising my free hand before his face, "With these. I am the artist, the conjurer, and the magician. These are my children; this is my world."

His grubby fingers mimic a black spider, but a clumsy one, reaching forward to desecrate a rearing stallion in battle regalia. I slap his fingers away, "No. You must not touch." And creasing his brow he turns on his heel, around and around like a child in an awestruck stupefaction, spinning until he stops abruptly, bedizened and teetering close to causing irreparable damage. I grasp at him and he thrusts me off, staggering among the marionette trees and heading for the balcony and the roof garden. I follow to light his way, ready to rescue anything that he might unwittingly destroy. Should I fling him from the parapet? Who could contest that it was anything but a drunken accident? My hand itches to accomplish the deed, but I do not. It is a crazy dance we do under the light of the moon, now full and proud in the vault of the night. A coughing fit has gripped him, and he is spluttering and gagging, reeling with out-flung hand and head pitched forward. He achieves two things simultaneously. The first is that he dislodges my ailing geranium; it teeters on the brink of a long moment before it falls and shatters in a spray of dry earth and flying terra cotta. The second is that he vomits. When I am certain he has voided his guts onto the pavers I steer him quickly from the sticky pool of bile, his shirt and tattered coat stained with nidorous wet putrescence. And I sit him by the table, crack open the fresh bottle of cognac and pour him a drink. He swallows it rapidly, then hangs his head between his legs and groans unintelligible nothings. And while he is thus engaged I engineer his demise. I place a sharp knife on the table, just within my reach, and I look around me at my toys waiting in mute expectation. Strange expressions shift in the lead paint of their faces, and they nod their approval for what it is that I must do. And I bow to them, just as I would bow homage to Carmanio, weak in the presence of beauty. Hugo has not yet passed into that murky comfort of unconsciousness, so I force his head back and up-end the brandy bottle into his slack mouth. "Drink up Hugo, drink it all!" And it is almost frenzy, which possesses me, and he does not struggle nor push my hand aside, just gulps and gulps until he can ingest no more. And in the red-lit shadows fantastic I drag and push the chest we have carried upstairs across the floor, closer and closer to where Lilianne dreamed her last fevered dreams before death. And I undo the straps and I throw back the lid. It is the moment glorious, the brink of all that can be made real. I stretch up and rip away the shielding canvas that I had stung across the skylight, and the fiery moon explodes into the chamber all sterling and pure, bleeds her glorious lambency into the heart of the shadows and the firelight. And I am elated.

Says Hugo, "What are you doing over there?"

Searching, his hazy vision has picked me out amid the moving shades; I am as a column of sable smoke and darker things, haloed by the crowning moon.

"I am preparing the bed," I muse, talking to him softly, placidly.

"Why, you going to _enjoy_ me?" And he laughs at his feeble humour and throws up a mouthful of amber vomit, which splashes over the newspaper. It is a shame that Hugo cannot read; perhaps he might have guessed the ultimate severity of his situation if had he been able to.

"Damn you," I counter, "...you damned Lilianne?"

He does not know who Lilianne is and assumes that I play him a secret jest.

"I gave it to Lilianne?" he asks, wiping his speckled lips across his dirty coat sleeve. "Was she good?" And he repeats her name over and over, sounding the syllables like a retarded child. I grow steadily angrier.

"Come now, you should know." I am back by his side, at the edge of forever, perched at the lip of a chair close to his. He does not even protest when I steal forward and reach into his shirtfront. He only looks at me through those watery, weasel eyes of his, smiling as he drools, and the callus of his nipple hardens under my fingertips. And he takes in a breath and grips my wrist and I recoil in the very depths of my soul, but I continue knowing that all will soon be done and finished. His claw is covered with coarse black hair, matted and furrowed with deep scratches and flaking skin. I manage to ease his grip undone, push him gently away and convince him to remove his coat. And the filthy rag falls to bunch in a heap on the floor. I begin to unbutton his shirt, peel back the vomit-soiled material to expose his chest, and he relaxes and hoarsely whispers some crude encouragement into my ear.

"You do know Lilianne," I tell him.

Says he, "Really?"

"Oh, yes, I know that you do."

Says he, parting his legs and intimating that I should direct my eyes to his crotch, "Well, if I have had the pleasure of her acquaintance, and I poked her, then she must have been good, heh?"

I laugh in the back of my throat and take up the almost empty cognac bottle by its slim, green neck.

"She was a friend of mine."

He looks at me and his mouth opens as if to make reply but I cut him off. Alas, for Hugo it is only a split second in the mirror of recognition that he has to reflect on my words before the bottle smashes into his face with as much force as I can muster. He is slumped over the table, running little rivers of blood into the wood and the vomit.

"That was before you raped and killed her," I utter, pulling his lice-ridden head back by the hair so that his bleeding face swims before me. And I spit in it.

Hugo was not long sleeping in the Underworld; just time enough for me to prepare his demise. And yes, I know I could have killed him there and then, taken my knife and cut his throat; but I did not. Instead I calculated his death, which had to be by inches, retribution, punishment.

He comes back to consciousness with a splash of cold water to his face. Blood oozes from a vicious slash just above the left eye, his nose is broken and bleeding, his cheek torn in a jagged rend. He is moaning as he falters into the land of the living, moaning, but that is all. And he opens his eyes and stares crazily through a film of red, beholds his persecutor and attempts to bellow. He finds that he cannot, for his jaw is closed on a bit, which I have wedged between his teeth.

"Something wrong Hugo?" I ask, "No use trying to call out, you've got your mouth full anyway." He tries to garble something incoherently. "Just like you, to talk with your mouth full, not a mannered bone in your despicable body. In any case, it's merely something for you to bite down on if you think you cannot stand the pain, like I had to bite down on a block of wood. Remember?" And as I talk I slide the tip of my knife into the tear in his cheek. And Hugo jerks with a spasm of agony, makes to rise and cannot, finds his liberty constrained by tightly corded ropes that cut into the flesh of his wrists and ankles. I have bound him to the chair in which he sits. He attempts to curse me through his gag.

"No use, no use," I remark, "Your mouth is closed with the key to Lilianne's room. There it is and there it stays. Can you taste the blood on that key; her blood, the blood you spilled Hugo?"

Terror rocks him and he tries to leap and to scream all at once; and I am much amused and wave my lethal blade before his disbelieving eyes.

I will admit that a thrill entered into me, a charge electric, which gave me pleasures I had never experienced before. It delighted me to imagine him squirming and contorting while my knife set fire to his tortured nerve-ends. And the blade, christened with a kiss of blood, traces a red line down his sweaty; gore smeared neck to lightly poise above the pounding agate prison of his heart. I could feel the thudding vibrations of that heart beating up through the cold steel of my knife, and I slowly pushed in the tip so that a flower of red welled up and ran down to join in a criss-cross of bloody lines over his torso.

"Un," says I, slicing a thin red line around his left nipple. "Et deux," taking the tip off the other. "I have something to tell you Hugo," I look up into his face, wiping my blade on his trouser leg as I do so. His eyes are streaming tears and he is sobbing against his gag. And just as I am about to commence, there is a creak, ever so faint on the landing just beyond my door. And my ears prick to the sound of padded footfalls retreating down the stairs. I turn back to Hugo; "It seems that we don't have much time. Etienne has gone to send for the Gendarme. How do I know, well listen my friend and I will tell you. But I must be quick, they will not take long to come, yet fear not, I assure you that Death will have you by then."

In the mouth of madness I hear him screaming and screaming, so I silence his panic by placing my hand over his rancid mouth. And he ceases his writhing and simply stares at me through blood and tears and witlessly accusing eyes.

"You asked me about my lost leg; and so did Lilianne. And I did tell her, just as I shall tell you...though you know the tale already, for you see, I recall your face my friend. Yes, I remember you...

"I was younger, but no so very young that the world would forget my deed. No, I have lived but four long winters and four short summers since then; and as you see, only thirty years have elapsed since my birth. I was a soldier serving in the armed services. That itself is a crime for we, as soldiers, were little more than criminals ourselves. No doubt lower than the police who beat and shoot anyone suspected of dissension. Even now the Third Republic finds its own in the streets with their brains splashed all about the cobbles. Why haven't they beaten your brains out Hugo?

"It was on a night just as this, a great moon all silver in the vault of the sky, thin veils of cloud drifting black on indigo, a sprinkling of stars to light my way, that I found myself in the cemetery of St. Ouen. St. Ouen is not a place unfamiliar to me, for I visited there only quite recently. Don't be so surprised Hugo, I see the disbelief in your eyes; you shall sleep there too before this night is done, yet rest assured that your sleep will last forever- none shall ever disturb you! But listen...I climbed the low wall that bisects the far side, hidden by the darkness and the trees, away from the great entrance of the street. Do they lock those gates to keep the living out or the dead in- or is it vice versa? No lock has ever kept me from my heart! But the last time that I did this proved somewhat more difficult than on previous occasions, for I now possess but one leg; and just as before, I made my way to the trenches. You would be fully aware that the poor are deposited in these holes after the surgeon's knife has done its work, sewn into sacks and left in rows beneath the planks awaiting burial. You would have sewn many into their shrouds, my friend, tell me this is not so? I had but a guttering candle to light me at my task, lifting the planks to expose the sacks. I suffered no blade of conscience and no guilt. No thought of divine retribution assailed me when I located her corpse. And neither was I affected by any dismay or fright at this thing I did- no ghosts threatened me. I hauled her from the confines of the trenches, laid her out serenely in the cold comfort of the dark, a young girl of sixteen, perhaps a little younger; and I cut the bag from her body with my knife and spread her sweet shell by the trench-side. She did not resist my ardour, how could she, being dead? From the floral offerings I removed some paper and placed it under my knees so as not to soil my clothing, and what is more, as I entered her chill flesh I experienced the pleasures of knowing her intact, a virgin. I came quickly, could not help myself for such was the intensity of my passion. So much for your pitiful pleasures, you have no idea what true ecstasy is. I have taken Lilianne in the same fashion. Don't be so shocked; you had her yourself, you have said as much. Oh Hugo, don't be such a hypocrite! When she lived we often coupled, but it was not the same as the ultimate thrills to be had this way. I found Lilianne after a brief search among the bags, peeled back her shroud and made love to her gently, whispering into her ear this very same tale. In life she had asked me many questions that I could not answer, but in death, as I made love to her corpse, I could tell her all. I recall on both occasions the musty smell of the earth and the scent of the flowers, of my own fluids, my sweat, my come. Hugo, you have no idea of the rapture and the calmness of spirit which follows the act. I left Lilianne as she lay; the tale of her discovery has been on the lips of everyone for days. Of the first girl, well, everyone makes mistakes do they not? And you of all people need not ask the outcome of that adventure. You made a frightful mistake this evening, bragging about your own sexual conquests. Poor Hugo! Such a mistake, such a fool you are. As the night drew inexorably towards the dawn I pleasured myself with the succulent flesh of that girl, gave her the fever of my lusts, not once, but three times. The joys of ultimate pleasure are to be had in the grave Hugo, and the dead don't complain, you can take your time, enjoy the act, enjoy yourself!

"At length I lay exhausted but content, and passed into sleep almost immediately. It was in the first glimmer of daybreak that I opened my eyes, and by that time it was too late. Too late to replace my cold, cold companion for the Sexton has come to fill the trenches, and I am running, running with him yelling at my back. I figured I had made good my escape, when his mangy hound sprang up from the mouth of hell and fastened its feral teeth to my calf. I struggled with the demon as it savaged me, managing to twist its neck and release my injured leg. It fell with its tongue lolling from its head, and by the time the Sexton reached his dog, I had leapt the fence and fled into the new day, the graveyard of St. Ouen far behind. My escape was not to be so easy though, for my wounds festered and became rancid with the maggot; and I was taken to the army surgeon.

Says the doctor: _"This must come off." _

"And it was you who held me fast, you bastard, tied me down while that fucking butcher cut off my leg! I had forgotten your ugly face, but it came back to me that day in the street when the Gendarme shot that man; swam up out of the darkness with such vivid intensity that I struggled not to kill you there and then. Chance brought me to that tavern. Fate brought me to you! The pain of that ordeal, of having my leg cut off I can only describe as being like hot knives carving into my flesh- you've had a little taste of that this night Hugo, how did it feel? Ah! Don't answer it doesn't really matter. And after what you and that fiend had done, and my leg amputated, you seemed to be well pleased with your hideous work. What became of that bastard, that fucking surgeon? I hope a pox took him to hell. How many legs did you help take off, how many arms, how many fingers and toes? How many pretty girls have you raped? So you used a hot brand and cauterised my bleeding stump, clumsily stitched the torn flesh and wrapped it in coarse linen, and I, with hot tears scalding my cheeks suffered then the agonies of the damned. Even while I suffered in my delirium I was arrested and gaoled for two years, put to breaking rocks, chained and whipped, I still bear the damned scars across my back. A one-legged man with a ball and chain clamped to his ankle! It's a joke isn't it- and it's funny, no? What were you doing Hugo while I was in hell, stealing, raping, and murdering innocents no doubt, mutilating people? What army surgeon in their right mind would hire the likes of filth such as you? Why are you not there now?

"No, no, don't bother answering. I'm sorry, I forgot, you have your mouth full. My apologies, but I should go on…

"Upon my release I was discharged from service, dishonourably, of course. And such is my vice."

" Captain Leroux, might I have some water?"

A carafe and a glass are brought and set upon the table; he pours from the ewer and passes it across to me. I raise the glass to my lips.

"What is your opinion of someone who could do such a thing?" I ask, but the Captain merely takes in a breath and replies coolly, "Tell us about Fernande Mery."

"Pardon, who?"

"The dancer. She was known professionally as Carmanio."

"Carmanio," I whisper, repeating her name; caught in the reverie of its magic. "I suppose I must..."

"There is a Sergeant of the Gendarme who deserves just such a fate as yours Hugo," I utter between my teeth, "and he no friend of mine! You killed Lilianne and he couldn't give a rat's ass. The police so love to do their job! And Lilianne went to the trenches without her death avenged. But he recognised me from the army, some time passed. And he knew what it was that I had done. And what is more, I know that he has been here seeking me, keeping an eye on me, waiting for me to slip. A big fat rat has been whispering in his ear... But I am not as stupid as he would like to think. And do you know me now Hugo; do you recall the soldier whose leg you helped sever? Shocking the coincidences of Fate, wouldn't you agree? But I must ask you this- what is love Hugo, do you know, have you ever risen above the putrid animal of your instincts? Why do I even bother to ask you such a question? I do, I know what love is. No, I did not love Lilianne, although she was my friend and did not deserve the likes of dirt like you. I love a dancer called Carmanio. Oh, Hugo, she is the love to die for, that which you could never hope to attain."

Droplets of gore are splashing to the floor, ruby beads mingling with a spreading pool of urine as Hugo voids himself.

"I love Carmanio with such fierce intensity that I am sure I might die if she cannot return that love. And it was Lilianne, dear, sweet, Lilianne who guided me in my quest for that love, gave me a simple thing called Hope. I used my craft and I cast a steadfast toy soldier from Metal d'Alger, but by a strange coincidence of Fate I had not filled the mould with enough alloys, and the soldier was missing a leg. Yes Hugo, just like me! And I painted onto his silver face a look of such devotion that the Gods themselves would have taken pity of his plight. Faithfully I coloured his uniform- gleaming with buttons and buckles and honour.

"And I carved a ballerina; detailed like nothing I have ever made. It was almost as if I had created the perfect symmetry, a bending lily and unbearably beautiful. And the tiny dancer I polished and kissed and placed reverently in a box beside the soldier, and these I sent to Carmanio. I gave these gifts, complimented with poetry and chocolates as a tribute to her beauty, hoping that her curiosity would be sufficiently aroused to permit me an audience.

"So my business calls me away to the provinces so that some little orphans might smile and know a momentary happiness. You should have seen their bright faces Hugo, joyed by the simple renderings of paper and wood; kites and dolls and trains and the like; as much as I could fit into that big old trunk of mine. And on my return I had intended to restock with much needed supplies, timber and paints, these and other things. But I did not because destiny called me home to something other. I returned with but one burning desire in my heart, to see Carmanio. And I went to the Theatre des Anges swelling with the music of my love, brimmed full of triumph and victory. She would see me, of this I was certain, and she would smile and take my hand. Trembling, her lovely lips would…

"But they told me she had gone. And it is with a vainglorious heart that I tell you this, my friend, I need not play the charade for a moment longer- I knew where she had gone because I had sent her there!"

The night clamours for attention, noises in the street and bells ringing out the hour of three. It is now, the moment of truth, time to end the game, time to realise my dreams.

"Can you see yourself reflected in your own blood?" I ask, flashing my knife before his eyes, "I should shove it fair up your ass you dirty bastard. You deserve worse for what you did to Lilianne." I hold back, drop the lethal dagger onto the table, rise and spin his chair so that he faces in the direction of the midnight gauze-veiled island of my bed. And I rise and cross slowly to that raised bier, stop before it and turn back to Hugo. I tell him that I shall not pierce his heart for I have less mercy than that. No, I tell him that his death has already begun and him not even aware of it. For while he slouched over the table in a puddle of his own sickness, while he mumbled incoherent nonsense, I have opened the cognac bottle and into this I have spilled a generous amount of arsenic. The very same poison I have used to lace Carmanio's chocolates!

"Your Sergeant found the dancer and the toy soldier, did he not?"

Captain Leroux nods the affirmative but does not offer any reply.

"And he had my description from that silly char woman back-stage. Is this not true?"

Once again he makes no reply.

"And he came to investigate because he knew me, knew who I was and why I had been discharged from the army and he engaged Etienne in my absence to spy. The connection with Mademoiselle Broyer and the dancer Carmanio must have been as obvious as the ugly nose on his ugly face. But although he knew that I had gone from the city, all he could do was await my return; for I knew that upon my return Carmanio would indeed be among the Chosen of the Angels. So they waited, waited like spiders in a web to catch me, slip my landlord a bribe perhaps…

"And I took myself once more to the shadowy realm of the cemetery of St. Ouen. Romance fires my heart as I seek her grave. The moon guides me like a lamp to light the way. And finding the earth soft and freshly turned I set to the toil of digging, and eventually I disinter her coffin and throw back its lid, behold my one true love asleep in her narrow bed, wrapped in her grave linen. Her flawless skin is tinged blue silver, her raven locks wound into a thick braid that crowns her head. I stoop and place my first kiss on those lips turned purple, and with some difficulty then, I proceed to remove the body, taking care not to rupture the pathologist's stitches, gently tumbling both of us over the low fence to fold her into my now empty trunk. And elated and full of euphoria, oblivious to anything but my devotion I drive my rented carriage homeward, stopping briefly at the tavern where fate gave me you, Hugo. Ah, Hugo, you were so obliging, helping me up to my apartment with the object of my love. I could not have managed by myself. And you laughed and joked, but you laugh no more. But now there is little time, for Etienne has gone for the Gendarme, the Sergeant has come before with a suspicion that I have been up to my old tricks again. And he is correct in his assumptions.

"And now Hugo, be my witness, for all lovers must consummate their passions..."

He watches, blades of pain torture him, blood colouring his grimy skin. And my room is a Grande Theatre and the play the claiming of the Sleeping Beauty. I slowly unbutton my shirt and pull it from my shoulders, watch it flutter to the floor, devoured by the changing shadows. My dolls look on, approval in their painted, passive eyes. And I weep a tear of joy, and my tears are mercury 'neath the glory of the moon. The high firmament is burning with myriad constellations, celestial lights that flood through the skylight canopy to guide me to her bower. Morpheus filters through the eaves, waiting his moment in silent expectation. I reach down and unbutton my trousers, remove them so that they join my discarded shirt. And naked in the surreal half-light thrown by the moon and the lamp and the fire, I part the film of dark gauze that screens the bed from view. Phantoms shimmer beyond it, breathing a new life and casting a light supernal o'er the bower and its occupant. The bed is strewn with flowers; all the perfumed loveliness of nature's lures, all wreathed about with the ivy vine and the holly leaf. There the pale ghost of the lily across her breast, there the violet and the marigold and the pansy and the rose to scent her skin and compliment the shapely contours of her now decomposing flesh. She is the vision splendid. Carmanio.

"Look upon the Goddess, Hugo, look and bow homage!"

I fear the life is running quickly from him, he is barely breathing.

"Feast your eyes," I declare, "Witness this betrothal."

I climb up beside Carmanio, she who rests, not dead, but sleeping all illumed in midnight flame and darksome. She, the one poised at the gulf between Man and God. Fairer than the fairest that has ever lived and died, finer the texture and the softness of her skin than any silk, finer the lustrous weave of her tenebrous locks unbraided, cascading like spilled ink flowing amid the flowers. Gently I stroke her pale, pale breasts. And my lips place tender kisses on those blue tinged nipples; burn a flaming trail along the sutured line of course stitching that holds the surgeon's work tenuously together. My lips slide back in a passionate smile and my jaw opens slightly, the tip of my tongue finding the frayed end of the thread, clamping it between my teeth. And as a song swells in my soul I begin gently pulling up the twine. The stiches come undone and her fluids spill into my mouth. As her body yields to my kiss and her secrets unfold before my raptured gaze I release the end of the thread and let my lips slide to the dip and the curve beyond her open belly to arrive wanting in that dark thatch of mystery, the forest place where to enter is to know all her secrets. My pulse quickens and I am instantly erect and hard, aching to know paradise, to be as one with the gods. And she shall transport me to those heights, to that place I have never known, never dreamed of before. As my shaft enters her, I hear the final gasp of air escape from Hugo's lips, and he expires, the poison gripping his heart with a stranglehold of steel. I kiss my Carmanio and stroke her face and murmur endearments and devotions and tell her that I have never loved another. I can feel the silken texture of her insides, held in my grasp tightly as I drown in an ocean of desire. In the back of my mind I am aware of a muffled thudding, and it is not the rhythmic beating of my heart nor is it the frenzied stab of my member. No, it is an intrusive sound that filters from without. I hear voices through the banging, "Open this door Monsieur Blot, this is the Gendarme, open up immediately!" I must put them from my mind, honour my love, for I am almost there and I cannot fail. My hips move faster and faster, my prick becoming engorged and painfully hard, near to the point of release, near to attaining paradise. And the door crashes inward and I shudder and spend, collapsing into the splayed flesh of my lover. And turning I see a collection of silly faces frozen in a tableau of shock. Etienne is there with the police, and he pushes them aside and enters upon the spectacle. He mouths some words of disbelief then spins about abruptly and vomits on the floor. Ignoring this I simply turn back to my beloved and brushing a dozen squirming larvae from her mouth place a fervid kiss upon her cold, cold purple lips.

Says Captain Leroux: "Degoutant! Monsieur Blot, your story is incredible, if my sergeant had not seen it with his own eyes I should find this horror difficult to believe. What possessed you to commit such a disgusting crime?"

I stare back and reply with a less brutish remark: "How is love a crime?"

Leroux's blue eyes flash and open just a fraction wider.

"Love!" he exclaims. "Surely you jest!"

The blank expression on my face tells him that I do not.

"What would you have?" I ask, "Everyone to his taste. Mine is for corpses."


End file.
